Credo
by Bryon Nightshade
Summary: Zero. A priest. A corpse. There are far more questions than answers surrounding this tangle of bodies. It's not a good combination for an android who prefers things simple. In his stubbornness, Zero will venture far outside his comfort zone to find answers. Just don't expect him to be happy about it. Complete, with epilogue.
1. Chapter 1

_Disclaimer: this story uses characters and situations copyright Capcom. They are used without permission, and not for profit._

_If you have half as much fun reading this story as I did writing it, you're in for a good time._

* * *

"I don't like it when they hide."

Rekir looked over to his boss. He saw red armor and a beam saber perched atop one shoulder. He saw blonde, unreasonably long hair. He saw a sharp-featured, almost idyllically handsome face. He saw an intricate, personalized design-and in the world of robots, such extra care meant extra resources spent on the build, and extra resources meant more power.

For all his power, Zero, squad leader for the 0th Squad of the Maverick Hunters, looked perturbed.

That was enough to worry Rekir. Zero's lack of expression was famous throughout the Hunters. He was a loner by inclination. His recent experience with death hadn't seemed to change much.

Reploids, Rekir knew, were capable of the same emotional range as humans, and their personalities were as varied and colorful. Some reploids hooted and hollered and cut up. They were loud and proud. Zero was all the way on the other side of the spectrum.

It had gotten better of late. Zero seemed to get along with the legendary father of reploids, X, and with X's recent joining of the Maverick Hunters he seemed to be settling. That didn't make him easy to work with, exactly. Most reploids still feared him. When Zero had first appeared, it was in a blaze of fury and madness and death. It had been, at the time, the most Hunters ever lost in a single incident. Even after Zero's defeat and rehabilitation, most people didn't think he was truly "fixed", and stayed away. Only slowly, by demonstrating unmatched skills and steadiness in service of the Hunters, was Zero able to achieve some measure of acceptance.

Then Zero had gone and died in the First Maverick War, only to reappear-seemingly intact-at the zenith of the Second. Rumors abounded that X and Zero had clashed. Whispers circulated that Zero's madness had returned. Even though Zero eventually returned to the Hunters, seemingly safe and sound, the rift between him and the general Hunter population had reopened.

Zero had long-ago earned the nickname "Red Demon". To your average Hunter, his resurrection was more infernal than miraculous.

When he thought about it, Rekir felt that Zero's solitude might be internalized ostracism. It was the sensation the "out" kid gets that there must be something wrong with him, after all. Better off alone.

All Rekir knew for sure was that Zero was with the Hunters again, and back in command of the 0th Squad, and that put Rekir back to his usual spot of cleaning up after Zero's messes. Compared to Zero, Rekir was an unremarkable humanoid reploid. His mixed green and white armor wasn't uncommon. He lacked any hair-his helmet was permanently installed. His large tread feet were, unlike for Zero or X, not a place to conceal boosters for extra acceleration, but a necessity to keep his inferior balance servos from dumping him on the ground every few minutes. Seeing Rekir and Zero side-by-side was almost a let-down. But being normal, in Rekir's opinion, had advantages of its own.

"Why's that?" he asked Zero. "What's different when Mavericks hide?"

"Hiding is an expression of weakness," Zero said contemptuously. "It's a way of avoiding a fight you wouldn't win. But a Maverick is a Maverick because he's chosen to fight. And if he chooses to fight, what business does he have trying to avoid me?"

"I wouldn't want to fight you," Rekir said honestly.

"Of course not. You would lose," said Zero without judgment or contempt. "You know this, so you don't do anything that would make us enemies."

Rekir frowned. "I like to think I'm a Hunter who avoids Maverickism because it's the right thing to do."

Zero studied him for a moment. "Oh," he said, "you mean like X is always talking about?"

"Yeah, I suppose."

Zero's face sharpened as he concentrated, as if Rekir had said something difficult to grasp. The moment passed, and he shook his head. "Either way, I prefer it when Mavericks don't hide. I'd much rather fight them directly and be done with it."

"I won't argue there." Rekir brought the transport to a hover, then to the ground, touching down at the side of the road. "This is the address we were given," he said, pointing out Zero's window. The Hunter squad leader turned his head to look at the building-large, white, with numerous windows of colored glass.

"What is this place?" he asked.

"Saint Simon's," Rekir replied. When Zero showed no signs of comprehension, he added, "It's a church."

"A church?" Rekir could almost see Zero reviewing his files. "I don't know what that is," the red robot said when he finished.

That left Rekir stumped. One of the reasons no one knew much about Zero was that Zero knew so little about himself. When he'd woken up in Hunter custody, it was with vast swathes of his memory missing or garbled. On the other hand, the limited list of things he did know was disturbing. He knew more about X's design, for example, than anyone short of Dr. Cain or X himself.

Not for the first time, Rekir wondered if this gap in Zero's memory was something he'd forgotten or something he'd never known.

Rekir tried to figure out how to explain it. "It's a place of worship," he said. "It's a place religious people go to for services and rituals."

He wondered if Zero understood.

"Oh."

He didn't.

"Supposedly," Rekir said, trying to segue, "our Maverick was a member of the congregation here. He was last seen going inside."

"So he's hiding inside," Zero said. His eyes narrowed. "But I don't see any signs of violence, and... Rekir, are there any humans permanently at the church?"

"I've got a report that there are some live-in clergymen there."

"So... yes?"

"Yes."

"But the Maverick hasn't attacked them," Zero said, "or if he has it's been awfully quiet…" Reaching over the seatback he grabbed a headset and tossed it to Rekir. "We'll do a perimeter sweep," he said. He looked back to where the third member of their team, Mace, waited patiently, cradling a sizeable laser cannon. His stocky, solid build was meant to provide him a stable firing position regardless of where he was or what was going on around him. It also made him resemble a series of barrels joined together. The upper portion of his face was hidden beneath a red visor, polarized so that Mace could see out but no one could see back in. Combined with his quiet demeanor, it left the sniper impossible to read.

Zero's face flickered into a frown. Rekir thought he understood why. "Zero," he said quietly, "I told you Boj died in the Second War."

Zero nodded, and his face eased. He tossed a second headset to Mace. He took none for himself; unlike his compatriots, Rekir knew, Zero had an internal transmitter. It was an almost unheard-of luxury for replica androids-but then, Zero wasn't a reploid. No one knew quite what he was, but reploid wasn't it. "Mace, you'll cover the street from the van," he said. "We'll keep in touch on Hunter circuits."

He and Rekir got out as Mace prepped himself for overwatch. They all knew the routine by now. If there was a Maverick holed up in there, they didn't dare just rush in, not when there were humans that might still die. They needed to confirm his presence, then close in on him like a net. If it came to direct combat, there was no question of the eventual outcome-not with Zero on their side. But, Rekir knew, letting humans die along the way…

There was a legal case, famous amongst the Maverick Hunters, of a Hunter who'd chased a Maverick through a populated area. The collateral damage to humans from the chase had been so extensive that the Hunter was deemed to have broken the First Law of Robotics. There was only one punishment for a robot that broke the Three Laws of Robotics.

The Hunters never said his name these days.

Just as Zero and Rekir were preparing to go their separate ways, the church's front doors opened. A man in black pants and a short-sleeved, button-up black shirt strode out; a tab of white could be seen in the center of his collar. "Can I help you?" he asked.

Rekir and Zero shared a surprised glance. Zero spoke to the man. "Is there a Maverick in there?"

"No," the man replied, drawing closer. Rekir was able to get a good look at him. He was past middle aged for a human, somewhere between 50 and 60 (Rekir's sense for such things, unusually good for a reploid, pegged him at 55). His hair, which had once been brown, was now predominantly grey, and was swept back along his head in a form of comb-over. He wasn't balding center-out, Rekir decided, he just had less hair everywhere. The man's hands were callused and tough, like old leather, which surprised Rekir, and his face was lined in the brow and cheeks, which didn't surprise him at all. The man's face was benevolent-not really smiling, but ready to smile at any time.

Maybe he hadn't heard about the charges, Rekir decided. Zero seemed to come to the same conclusion, because he said, "There's a reploid named Vanzetti that we're trying to find. Did he…"

"...Come through here?" the man replied. "Oh, yes. He was here not long ago. He's one of my parishioners. A regular, he is, every Sunday, tries to come to the daily services when he can..."

"He was here?" said Rekir, concern coming into voice and face alike, concern strong enough for him to interrupt. "Is everyone okay? Who was hurt?"

"No one was hurt," the man said soothingly. "Nothing happened. He wished to talk to me, and I let him. It's my job to listen, you know. My commission. I'll never turn away someone who wants to talk."

"Splendid," Rekir said hurriedly, "but what did he say? Where did he go?"

"Ah. That, I can't tell you."

Zero's head, which had been looking over the outside of the church, snapped about to look at the man. "What? He talked to you, didn't he?"

"Yes, I did say that."

"So what was it about?"

"I can't tell you," the man repeated patiently.

Zero's face twisted in incomprehension. Rekir might have laughed if he didn't feel the same. "Why not?" he managed.

"Because it was in the context of the sacrament of confession," the man replied. "Nothing he said there goes outside the confessional."

"So he didn't come here as a Maverick," Zero said, "but to go to this… confession?"

"Vanzetti came here to go to confession, yes," the man replied.

Realization burst upon Rekir. _Rust me_, he thought. "And then you came out here to cover for him while he got away!"

Zero was already blurred into motion, so fast Rekir could barely follow him. The man stumbled in the wash of Zero's sprint, and Rekir reached to help, but the man steadied himself on his own. His expression was the same as it had ever been.

Rekir did some quick calculations and determined Zero would complete a sweep before Rekir could start his, so he remained with the man. "I hope you understand what this all means," he said severely.

"Oh, yes," he replied placidly. "Vanzetti did speak to me, you know."

"Then why let him go? Why help him escape?"

The man blinked at Rekir. The blink somehow made Rekir embarrassed that he'd asked the question without the man seeming like the bad guy for saying so. That, Rekir thought, was not fair at all.

Zero returned to them. His face betrayed his irritation. "The perimeter is clear," he said. "No visual on anyone coming to or going away. If I went inside your… church... I wouldn't find him inside, would I?"

"I don't think you would," the man said. "I couldn't say for certain-I left him to speak to you-but I believe he's gone out into the city proper."

"Where?" demanded Zero.

The man sighed. "I've told you already, I will not betray his confidence. Ask however you like. Ask what he said, or what he implied. Ask where he's going, or where he's been. I will answer the same way. If your question is about something I know outside of his confession, I will cooperate. But the contents of his confession? Never."

"How can you say that?" Rekir shouted. "We have a known Maverick on the loose and you're doing... nothing?"

"You're quick to rush to judgment."

"I'm not rushing to judgment," Rekir said crossly, "I can see you not cooperating!"

"That's very true."

Exasperated, Rekir looked to Zero. The red robot was not moving. All his faculties were occupied with thinking. He looked up after long moments. "Rekir," he said, "we can't do anything to him or with him, can we?"

"We can't," Rekir said grudgingly.

"If you wish," the man offered, "you could have the police department bring me in for questioning. It will go little better, though. Either way, I need to be back before eight a.m. on Sunday. That should give me enough time to prepare for the day's services."

"How can you think about that right now?" Rekir said.

"We all have our responsibilities," the man replied. "I have mine, as surely as you have yours. I have a flock to tend to, you know."

Rekir was at a loss. He gave Zero a helpless shrug. The red robot shifted uncomfortably. "Rekir," he said, "I will search the interior of the church, just to be sure. Arrange for him," he pointed at the man in case there was any ambiguity, "to be picked up by ACPD."

"That's fine," the man replied. "Here's the key, by the way. That'll let you in to the church without needing to do anything drastic-you have a reputation, Zero of the 0th Squad, for not letting things stand in your way, and our building fund doesn't have enough in it to easily replace doors. Just kindly lock up when you're done, and I'll need the key back eventually."

Rekir finally understood part of why he felt so disoriented. This man seemed to know everything about the situation, and they knew nothing. He even knew Zero by sight and reputation, and they knew... nothing. "Who are you?" he asked.

The man looked at him, and a smile crept on to his face. "I was wondering when you'd ask that. My name is Vito Cherup. I'm a priest, and the pastor here at Saint Simon's, and you," he gave Zero a reproachful look, "have trampled my chrysanthemums."

* * *

Simple was best.

Zero fervently believed this. He'd heard it formulated in other ways, but those other ways all took more words to say it, which violated the spirit of the thing. Simple was best. It's not that he wasn't smart; he was. His combat diagnostics-his ability to read the actions and construction of opponents to capture their potentials and predict their actions-were as good as existed. Only X was in his league in that regard. About most things, he learned very quickly.

Nor was it that he despised necessary complexity. His body was complex. He acknowledged that. His targeting programs had very complex algorithms. He knew that. When complexity was unavoidable, he'd put up with it.

When complexity was unnecessary, he despised it.

"Explain," he said to Rekir.

He could see his subordinate sigh. He'd made that gesture before, although Zero was still working on what it meant. "It's called clerical privilege."

Zero and Rekir looked through the glass to see the priest sitting at the table in the plain, gray room. This was a first. Zero hadn't ever visited the human police stations before. There'd been no need. There was no equivalent for the interrogation room at Hunter Base, unless you counted the labs where they reconstructed reploids' final moments.

Zero avoided those labs.

"Clerical privilege," Zero repeated. "So... because he's a priest, he doesn't have to talk to the police?"

"Sort of. It only works if he was acting as a priest at the time. Like, if Vanzetti had walked up to him in the street and said whatever it was he said, the priest would have to tell us now. But because he was making a confession, and Vito heard it as a priest…"

"It's privileged?"

"Yes."

"I don't understand."

Rekir shrugged. "I only sort-of understand. That's how the law's written, and that's about as much as I get. I've never been to church, myself," he added.

Zero almost said, "Neither have I." It would have been silly to say, of course, because he'd needed someone to define church for him, so it should have been obvious he'd never been to one. Instead he said nothing.

Vito had been as good as his word. He had spoken at length about Vanzetti. He'd described the reploid in sufficient detail that there could be no doubt about who he meant. He'd relayed how frequently and passionately the reploid had attended services, prayed, and sung. He even went on a short tangent about how Vanzetti had considered becoming a cantor.

And, as promised, he made the police look silly when they tried to get at the content of Vanzetti's confession. Vito evaded, dodged, and refused. Whether they came at it sideways or directly, pleadingly or angrily, they got nowhere. Zero was forced to acknowledge the man: he was both stubborn and clever.

"This is pointless," Rekir said.

"I agree," Zero said. "The priest won't tell them anything. I think we have his measure, now."

"It's frustrating."

"Yes." Zero shook his head. "Isn't there a human equivalent of the First Law? "A robot shall not...by inaction, allow a human being to come to harm"?"

"Criminal negligence, yeah, but clerical privilege trumps it. Aiding and abetting a criminal, maybe, for helping him escape."

"I hope they get him with that."

"Oh? I'm not used to you taking things personally."

Zero shifted uncomfortably. "How can he stand against me like that? How can he keep me from doing what I'm supposed to do? And how can he do it while saying he's right?" He shook his head. "I destroy Mavericks. It's what I do. If I ever thought that destroying Mavericks wasn't right... I wouldn't like that feeling." He pointed at the priest. "He almost makes me feel like that."

Rekir nodded. "Like... maybe there's a reason he's protecting him?"

"If it were just the clerical privilege thing… I think I could understand that. The rest…"

The police seemed to have given up. The two interrogators were talking to each other in the corner of the room. The priest looked up at the glass of the observation room and gave a cheery wave.

"It's one-way glass," Rekir hastened to say when Zero started. "He can't see us."

"Then why do it?"

"You got me. Humans are strange creatures."

The interrogators broke their huddle. "I'm afraid we'll be keeping you a while longer," one said. "Priest Vito Cherup, I hereby arrest you on suspicion of Aiding and Abetting a Known Criminal."

"Good," said Zero, but the priest was already shaking his head.

"That won't work," Vito replied. "Vanzetti is not a known criminal."

"He's been declared Maverick," the interrogator shot back.

"Which is not the same thing," Vito countered. "If you examine our legal code, the laws-including the law against Aiding and Abetting-all refer to "humans", "people", or "persons". Reploids are not legal persons. Therefore, they cannot break the law. If they can't break the law, they can't be criminals, so aiding or abetting them is not illegal."

"What are you talking about?" said the other interrogator. "We're talking about a reploid that broke the Three Laws! How is that not a crime?"

"The Three Laws of Robotics are separate and distinct from normal criminal law," Vito said. "A reploid who breaks the Three Laws is not a criminal, he's a Maverick. He doesn't get the benefits and protections of the criminal justice system, he gets plasma to the head. You can't have it both ways. So, there is no law that prohibits aiding and abetting a Maverick. What human would do it?"

"You, apparently," the interrogator snarled.

"If you say so." The priest calmly smoothed down one of his sleeves. "That said, if you try to arrest me on those grounds anyway, be sure to give Mr. Slate a call. He's an acquaintance of mine-I presided over his daughter's wedding, you see. He happens to agree with me on this little nuance of the law. I'm sure he'd be happy to explain it to you."

Zero watched the interrogators' faces getting paler and paler as Vito spoke. Zero turned to one of the humans standing nearby. "Who's Mr. Slate?" he asked.

That human, too, blanched. "He's a criminal defense attorney," he said. "Naw, that's not right. He's _the_ criminal defense attorney. Drove one DA to early retirement, drove a second to drink. If you took any ten normal lawyers, and got their best cases, Slate's top ten would trump 'em all. Got so many people wanting him on their side he half-retired by age forty. Nowadays you can't pay him enough to take your case. He don't work for money. He only shows up for cases he thinks are fun." He shook his head. "I wouldn't mess with him. Hell, I wouldn't touch anything he's a part of."

"Vito seems to make interesting friends," Rekir said drily. Zero had to agree.

The interrogators had reconvened their huddle, causing Zero to frown. "Are they going to let him go?" he said, disappointed.

The human answered. "I would, if it were me. I wouldn't wanna run against Mr. Slate unless I had something rock solid-and even then I'd think twice."

Zero, mind unsettled, watched as the interrogators closed with Vito. The discussion was low and not very interesting, at that point, although he did see the priest give small rectangles of paper to the two interrogators. What had X called those-business cards, that was probably it. And then the priest walked out, unmolested.

Zero's feet were moving on their own. Before he knew it he was in the same corridor as the priest, intercepting him, blocking him from walking past. The human had to check himself to keep from colliding with Zero. "Why are you doing this?" Zero hissed, ignoring the clamor of the police as they gathered to watch. "There's a Maverick out there, and one human's dead, with more expected to die, and here you are, saying nothing! What's wrong with you? What do you think you're doing?"

Vito smiled mildly. "I'm glad you're on this case, Zero," he said. "If I'm to be honest, and I hope you forgive me for it, I would have preferred X, but I understand he's a very busy person. You'd be my second choice, though, so I'll be satisfied with that."

Zero's face reformed into its confused expression; his form stiffened as all available mental capacity was redirected. Without further words Vito stepped around Zero and proceeded out. Slowly, the police got the idea that there was nothing more to see, that Zero was not going to do anything crazy, and they drifted away in ones and twos.

"Sir," Rekir said quietly, having followed on his boss' heels, "we should get going."

Nodding numbly, Zero assented.

* * *

_To be continued..._


	2. Chapter 2

The Hunter Base operations room was a work in progress. It always was. Once upon a time, it had been a presentation room where scientists gave reports to the press or each other on what they were working on. Cain Labs had no "operations" that needed a room of this type.

Then the First Maverick War had happened, and Sigma had turned the old Maverick Hunter Headquarters into a house of horrors. Cain Labs had come out of that ordeal largely intact, so a practical government with a driving need to get the Hunters reestablished had procured the building for the Hunters' use. Then Cain Labs itself had been hit by the X Hunters during the Second War. That attack had reversed much of the progress that had been made.

The result was that lots of equipment had to be improvised or built from scratch. The large display screen at the far end of the room had been subdivided into four quadrants, one for each of the Operators at work. Most of the seats had been torn out and replaced with banks of monitors and communications equipment. All of it was newly installed, and buggy as one might expect. If nothing else, the exposed wiring posed a tripping hazard for the less-dexterous members of the Hunters. The whole setup reeked of being an interim solution to a long-term problem, one that required extra work and time to keep running.

Alia didn't like that.

She could do it, sure; though a reploid herself, her background was in reploid design. These systems were considerably less complex than the ones she'd cut her teeth on. But that meant, in turn, that she ended up spending most of her "free time" doing... more work, before reporting in for her shift.

That, and the Operator before her in the rotation had a bad habit of bagging her.

"Come on, how do you forget to mention..." she cut herself off before completing the sentence; her microphone hadn't been keyed, anyway. Her undersized fists balled up in anger. Her design was the worst sort of compromise, one intended to generate a female-looking reploid to make interactions with humans easier. Technology and budgets being what they were, that meant scaling down typical reploid components to fit into her smaller frame, which ended up producing a physically underpowered reploid with no hope of improving her condition. Predictably, models like her were pigeonholed in intellectual or administrative jobs.

Alia jerkily brushed a stray strand of her shortly-cropped, blonde robot hair away from her headset. Her carapace was pink (of course it was) but she'd long-since stopped being self-conscious about it. "Charon, if you can't see both entrances, you're in the wrong place. Yes, I know those are the coordinates you were given. Didn't it occur to you that, if you can't do your mission where you are, maybe you should move? Yes, yes, it's the Operator's job to tell you where to go, but you're supposed to have a little initiative. You have the leeway to apply sound judgment here. That's why we tell you... Listen, I'm done arguing. Reposition to the southwest until both entrances are in view, okay? Two buildings should be enough."

She shook her head. If Ben left her this much of a mess one more time, she'd just let him stay on watch another hour or two and see how he liked that.

She distinctly remembered thinking those exact thoughts before.

"How are we doing?"

Alia turned. "Rekir," she said. "And... Commander Zero!"

The two Hunters approached her station. She felt a sudden spike of nervousness. It was one thing to talk to a Hunter-an incredibly dangerous, strong-willed, physically imposing Hunter-through a radio. It was quite another to be face to face with him.

Rekir didn't bother her. He was a reploid; from a purely intellectual viewpoint, she could look at his design and critique it and understand what he was and what he could do. Her background equipped her to do that. Nothing prepared her for dealing with Zero. The sense of "otherness" that rolled off of him was overpowering.

His eyes met hers; her mouth opened slightly. Zero's gaze was intense. She felt exposed before it. It made her want to squirm.

She became aware that Rekir had spoken, almost at the same time she became aware that she'd been staring. 'Gaping', her thesaurus supplied. She wanted to delete that subroutine sometimes. ('Often.') "S-sorry, what was that?" she said, breaking her gaze away from Zero.

"I said, what's our disposition?" Rekir said patiently. Alia wondered if he was used to his boss getting that sort of reaction. She glanced back at Zero. He had looked away, and his posture was one approaching boredom.

"Well..." Alia swallowed, tried to get back into her area of competence. "As you know, casualties to the 0th Squad have left it well below strength. I've had to borrow bodies from 5th Squad. With their help, we're almost done setting up the stakeouts."

"Where?" said Zero, even as he continued to look elsewhere.

Alia, grateful for an excuse, turned away from her superiors. With fumbling fingers she brought up a large-scale map of Abel City on her quadrant of the main screen. Three red lights appeared. One of them blinked. "Vanzetti worked at a testing facility for industrial dumbots. We've arranged to get repeat video from the facility's security system, and I've got a dumbot monitoring it for anything similar to Vanzetti's profile. Three false alarms so far, but at least we know the system's working."

"If he worked there, isn't it possible he knows the security laydown?" Rekir asked.

"Naturally, which is why we've also got two Hunters on overwatch. I wanted a third, but we just don't have the bodies to support." That light stabilized, and another started blinking. "This is the church Vanzetti worshipped at. Two more Hunters are staking it out." That light stabilized; the final blinked. "His place of residence. He lets a room and recharge station in reploid community housing in the city's West Side. One more Hunter is watching it. Everyone is on twelve-hour shifts. I know you had Mace with you before, but I borrowed him to bolster our numbers. Even so, we're using two of 5th Squad's Hunters. They'll probably expect a favor in return later on."

"Their favor is getting their Hunters back when we're done with them," Zero said.

"I wouldn't put it quite like that," Rekir said.

Zero just shrugged. "We'll do what we need to do. We-the Hunters-are not built for this sort of operation. Mavericks are usually flashier than this. They're either committing Hunter-assisted suicide, or making some political point. Either way, it's short and sharp. I don't like this."

"Nor I," Rekir agreed. "Alia, do you suppose there's any chance we can get the human police to pick up the stakeout job? This seems like the sort of thing they're used to doing, and it won't put them in harm's way."

"Doubtful," Alia said. "I'll ask, but don't expect much."

They looked at the map again. Zero's gaze, Alia noted, was at least as intense as the one he'd given her. She didn't know if she should find that comforting or not. At least it meant his staring wasn't personal.

"Where are you?" Zero whispered.

Alia typed at her console for a moment. "I've got a program looking for any financial records he might have. Other than that. we just don't know enough."

"We need information," Rekir said.

Alia heard a tiny sound coming from Zero, but when she turned to face him, he hadn't moved. Eventually he nodded. "Alia, continue with the finances, and give ACPD a call. Rekir, go to his workplace. Find out what you can about him there."

"Sure, boss. What are you going to do?"

Zero turned sharply, causing his long hair to whip about. "I'm going to have another talk with that priest. We know he hasn't told us everything, but I also feel as if..."

He didn't finish, and left his comrades behind. When Zero's retreating form rounded the corner, Alia felt a great deal of tension leaving her. A few minutes later, Zero was back to being an icon on her map, moving steadily away from Hunter Base. Nice and safe. Nothing dangerous about a few pixels.

She had to wonder about what she'd heard, though.

Had Zero really said "What would X do"?

* * *

The door opened. "Ah, Zero!" Vito said cheerily. "I thought you might come around."

"Have you seen or heard from Vanzetti?"

"Straight to business, then," Vito said, his face crinkling in a smile. "Not since his confession to me, no. But don't stand outside, come on in."

Zero thought to himself that everything that he planned to say could be said in a doorway, but the priest was already retreating into his home, and Zero followed, as if to fill the vacuum.

Zero's eyes had to adjust to the dim lighting. A single lamp, sitting on a small table in the corner, was all the illumination the room offered, as there was only a single small window and that was curtained. A stack of books rested next to the lamp, and a threadbare sofa sat next to the table. Opposite the sofa was a television, but Zero saw its power cord in a neat coil next to it, so he doubted it was used often. Three bookcases stood shoulder-to-shoulder, each sagging under the weight of their contents. No dust rested on either the books or the cases.

To Zero's left was not so much a "kitchen" as a "counter with a sink". Dishes, some with moisture still visible, were drying in vertical racks atop a towel. A small, circular table played host to two plain, wooden chairs. Ahead of Zero was a door leading, presumably, to a bedroom.

And that was all. The only adornment was a single unvarnished cross hanging above the television. Zero got the feeling the cross was looked at more often.

"Would you like the chair or the sofa?" Vito asked.

"I'll stand," Zero said.

"I suppose you don't really need to sit," Vito said, his voice changing as he folded himself onto the sofa. "But for an old man like me, well, little comforts go a long way."

"It leaves you vulnerable," Zero said. "When you sit, the first thing you have to do in an emergency is stand. That's time you can't recover."

Vito replied, "I daresay that's a lot more relevant to your life than to mine. But I understand. I won't ask again. Now... what can I do for you, Zero?"

"I'd like for you to start by telling me what you're up to."

"Up to?" said Vito, raising an eyebrow. "You're saying that I'm up to something?"

"I was thinking about your choice of words from earlier earlier. You were very careful to avoid calling Vanzetti a Maverick."

"I suppose I was," Vito allowed as he clasped his hands.

Zero's eyes narrowed. "Are you trying to say he's _not_ a Maverick?"

Vito tapped his fingers together.

"Answer me," Zero said, with frustration.

"I'm sorry," Vito said. "Usually, I use silence as a way of telling people I won't answer their questions. I guess you're not that socialized, and think it's rude. I won't do that in the future."

Zero put a hand to his head as if to steady it. "So you won't even tell me if your own words said he's a Maverick or not?"

"Think of it like this," Vito said kindly. "How would I know for certain whether he is a Maverick or not? That conclusion would be based on what I heard in that confession. So my opinion would reveal what he said in the confession, and I can't do that. Sorry, Zero, but you were a little too close to penetrating clerical privilege there."

Zero shook his head. "I don't like this clerical privilege thing. I don't understand it."

"It's very simple, really," Vito replied. "As a priest, I play a role in preserving the health of people's souls. One of the things I do is act as the conduit between God and parishioner. The parishioner confesses the sin before me, to God, and through me, God's grace comes upon that parishioner.

"The trouble is that matters of the soul are not the same as matters of the state. What would happen if I didn't have privilege? If I were to just turn around and give the contents of confessions to the state? Then what parishioner could confess his sins to me? No one would confess, and then people's souls would be tarnished. They'd be carrying unresolved sins around with them. I must do what's best for people's souls. Hence, privilege."

"Souls seem like a human concept," Zero said skeptically.

"It is an idea a bit older than robots," Vito allowed.

"So... what is it?"

"What is what?"

"A soul."

"The immortal 'I', the spiritual part of you."

"Of me?" Zero said in surprise.

"Of course," Vito replied.

Zero reviewed his schematics. "I wasn't built with a soul," he replied, with less conviction than he'd desired.

"It is an interesting problem," Vito replied. "Do robots have souls? Do androids? Some churches have thrown their weight one way or the other. The Catholic Church has not weighed in yet. The fifth conference on the subject is set to convene later this year. The archbishops have thrown around a lot of theological arguments without coming to a conclusion."

Vito leaned forward, and his voice dipped, as if he was making Zero a part of a conspiracy. "Between you and me, I think they're stalling. They know that the Church's decision will make a lot of waves, and they don't want to rush into it. They want to see more of what reploids are, what reploids do. They want to see evidence, one way or another. The Church's gears grind slow, but they grind exceeding fine. In the meantime, they've allowed individual pastors to follow their consciences." He smiled. "For my money, you have a soul, Zero, whether you acknowledge it or not."

Zero found he didn't like this presumption. Knowing so little about himself made him look inwards frequently. The notion that there was something else there that he'd missed-something so vital that the government's laws had to make room to accommodate its needs...

Have to divert, change the subject...

"So that's why you allowed Vanzetti to confess his Maverickism? To save his soul?"

"You presume too much," Vito said without accusation.

"Yes, yes, I get it," Zero said impatiently. "You can't say whether or not this _Maverick_ said he was a Maverick in his confession."

Vito cocked his head as if curious. "Why do you say he's a Maverick, Zero?"

Zero frowned. "Because he killed a man, breaking the First Law. If that doesn't make you a Maverick, I don't know what does."

"Oh, yes, murder would make one a Maverick, I agree," Vito said with a nod. "But why do _you_ call him a Maverick?"

"I just said why!"

"Did you? I must have missed it."

"He broke the First Law, so the government declared him Maverick and sent me to Hunt him! And you are making that far harder than it needs to be."

"I'm sorry if you think so. I also want justice to be done."

"Then tell me!" said Zero, leaning in so close to the priest that the human stiffened. "Tell me what he said in that confessional!"

"You know I can't do that, Zero."

The robot backed away, barely able to control his anger. "Hiding things from me... is the fourth most dangerous thing you can do," he said. "The stakes are too high for your games."

"They're not games," Vito said. "I take this as seriously as you do."

"Then stop dancing and play it straight!"

"That's not possible."

"Then you are useless," Zero said, turning for the door. "People will die and it will be your fault. I take no responsibility for what happens next. It will all be on you."

"I would say it's all on the murderer."

"Stop correcting me!" Zero shouted.

"It's part of my calling, I'm afraid. Though in this case, I would anyway."

Zero couldn't understand. He grabbed the door and practically threw himself through it. He heard a garbled voice crying "Don't slam the-" as the door banged shut hard enough to rattle its hinges.

Even that was an unsatisfying gesture. He had needed so much more.

* * *

Mace watched his boss stalk away from Vito's residence, a smaller building behind the church. He knew that posture. Zero's fists were tight, and his center of gravity was so far forward that if he wasn't walking he'd likely fall over.

That was frustration. No doubt about it. On a scale of one to ten, he'd peg it at about an eight.

Mace was about to ring in over the Hunter circuit when Zero beat him to it. "This is Zero, returning to base. No information gained."

That was a letdown. And it meant that Mace would be here for a while, yet.

"Sir, Rekir. We got a report in, and... well, you'd better hurry back."

Mace sighed, settled himself into his observation point, reduced his power expenditures to the minimum required, and got ready for ten more long hours of waiting.

* * *

The news anchor was professional. Not a hair on her head was out of place. Her voice was even in expression, neutral in tone, and devoid of accent. It didn't make her words any less painful.

"The second body in as many days was found today in Abel City's southwest residential district. The victim was found in her home after she failed to show up to work and her supervisors were unable to contact her. Her name is being held by the police for now, but it is known that she worked at the Watkins Corporation testing center.

"The murder is believed to be the work of a reploid named Vanzetti, who was declared Maverick over the killing of another Watkins Corporation employee yesterday. AACN-11 Action News contacted the Maverick Hunters regarding the case. A spokesman told us that the Hunters are taking the matter seriously, and that the 0th Squad, led by the world-famous Zero, is leading the effort to Hunt the Maverick down..."

"Enough," Zero said. Alia froze the picture. Rekir was glad; he didn't know how much more of that he could have dealt with. "We'll just have to move faster, now."

"We'll have to do it without police help," Alia said.

"Why's that?" asked Rekir. "What did they say when you called them?"

"Depends. Does one guy blowing a raspberry and two laughing count as speech?"

Rekir grunted. "This is probably the first time ACPD's glad something's _not_ in their jurisdiction. They were only too happy to say that this one's ours. Aren't they supposed to be protecting humanity too?"

"Forget them," Zero said. "They don't matter anymore. If this is our job, we'll do it. What about the financial records you looked at, Alia?"

"He pays his rent and his recharge bills, saves half of the rest, and donates what's left over to Saint Simon's," she said, pulling up a transaction history so they could see for themselves. Rekir didn't look too closely; he trusted Alia's analysis. "The savings haven't been touched. I think he knows better than to try and get to the money now."

"This tells us nothing," Rekir said. "Maybe I'm just not used to looking at people's payment histories, but I don't think even the most creative cop could hang a story over a guy who pays his bills and saves the rest."

"It implies he's planning for the future, doesn't it?" Alia said. "Saving money means he thinks he might need it later, which means he thinks he'll be alive later. That's not characteristic of Mavericks. Mavericks know they're courting death when they act. There's no sense for them to keep money they won't need. Most spend their money before they make their move, to up their odds in some fashion, or they give it away."

"So maybe Vanzetti went Maverick on the spur of the moment and didn't have time to plan it?" Rekir said. "No, that'd have to be really, really spontaneous... and he didn't kill the first guy on-site. He killed him in his home. That was a deliberate act, not a heat-of-the-moment one. He had time to think and time to plan."

Alia shook her head. "Maybe he's damaged. Maybe he's not thinking clearly. That would explain why he'd risk going back to his church after committing the act."

"Would it? I'm not sold there."

Alia's face tensed slightly. "I tend to think that anyone who goes to church is at least a little irrational."

"You know, in history, some awfully smart people have been really religious."

"Smart and rational are not synonymous," Alia countered.

Rekir shrugged indifferently. "It's their business, really. My only interest is in what it means for our pal Vanzetti. Here's the thing: if he was going to church before the murder, then going after the murder isn't a break in his pattern of behavior, it's consistent. So I don't see how hitting up Saint Simon's proves he's malfunctioning."

"We should probably assume rationality until we get evidence otherwise," Alia said grudgingly. "In any event, if there's anything to the idea that he went to Saint Simon's to confess the murder, he might go again after the second murder. So we need to make sure we've got full coverage of that place."

"I agree. But that's why we're staking the place out." Rekir turned to Zero. "What do you think?"

Zero's face was creased with a frown. Rekir recognized that pose. He was letting the world slip by, maintaining just enough situational awareness to avoid being taken by surprise, while devoting as much brainpower as he could spare to a problem. Other people might have seen it as rude, but Rekir had been around Zero too often to be offended by it. It was just how Zero was.

At Rekir's prompt, Zero looked up. "I think we might need to check our premises," he said.

Rekir blinked in surprise. "What do you mean, boss?"

Zero shook his head. "What did you find out at Watkins?"

"He graded out as a model employee," Rekir said, recalling the questions he'd asked and the conversations he'd had. "He worked as a lab assistant and labor for the human scientists there. He helped set up the tests, handled the big pieces of equipment, broke them down when they were done, that sort of thing. The dumbots they're working on are pretty big, and they were testing out all their different pieces and parts. It's nice to have a really strong aide that also gets how things are supposed to work, and can help massage the tests as they go. Intelligent, semi-skilled hard labor, right in profile for reploids. He was that guy. He wasn't part of a team, so he didn't work with any particular human too closely or too often; he worked with all of 'em. Everyone I talked to said he was polite, diligent, and observant."

"Swell guy," Alia said with open irony.

"That's the thing, everyone agreed with that," Rekir said. "They're really shaken by his going Maverick. He never showed any dissatisfaction or bad attitude. He really seemed to like his job and the humans he worked with. They said they treated him nice, in turn. I mean," Rekir glanced around, as if to make sure no human was in hearing, before plunging on in muted tones, "they're humans, of course they'll say that, but they really seemed to mean it. He still wasn't an equal, but they liked working with him. No friction at all."

Alia nodded. "No prior signs of Maverickism. It does happen, you know-a guy just snaps. Sigma never showed any signs of being a bad guy, right up until he was."

"That's a bad example. Sigma's revolt was planned out well in advance," Rekir said. "If we'd known where to look we would have seen Sigma's rebellion coming. He'd made all sorts of preparations before he went. But that's just it-Vanzetti didn't. Nothing. If he knew something or had something planned, he made no signs before he went home. The last person he spoke to said they had their conversation at 1715. He clocked out at 1740, so something could have happened there, but... well, that's a really tight window."

"What are the normal working hours there?"

"Uh... 1730, I think? Based on when the scientists said they went home."

"Staying late proves nothing, especially when it's just a few minutes."

Silence settled between the two reploids as they chewed over this new information. "What about you, sir?" Rekir asked Zero. Alia turned as well, though Rekir detected some hesitance on her part. "What came out of your discussion with the priest?"

Zero looked up at his subordinates. "I think he's bending his own rules," he said.

"Sir?"

His gaze settled on Alia, who shrank back a bit under the pressure. Rekir sympathized with that; that'd been him, at first. She'd learn. "What makes a reploid a Maverick?" Zero asked.

Alia's eyes flashed over to Rekir, as if hoping he'd bail her out. When he didn't, she replied, "Well, when a reploid breaks the Three Laws of Robotics, the government declares..."

"So that's what he meant," Zero said to himself. Alia's voice died out as confusion took hold, but Zero didn't explain himself. He refocused on Alia. "Call back to the police. Find out what you can about the first murder. Who saw it, who reported it, and how Vanzetti was determined to be a Maverick."

"Yes sir," she acknowledged.

Zero looked at Rekir. "As for you," he said, "we're going to go see a body."

* * *

_To be continued..._


	3. Chapter 3

The only sounds came from outside of the transport as it cruised through the streets. Inside it was nearly silent. From time to time Rekir glanced to the side to ensure his boss was still there.

Zero was sitting with his arms crossed and head down. His eyes were closed, but Rekir didn't doubt that he was awake. Zero was famous in the Hunters for refusing to recharge and refresh his systems while on the Hunt. Even when any sane reploid would have brought himself in for repairs, Zero carried on, trusting in the unmatched quality of his design to carry him through.

If Rekir was Zero's boss instead of the other way around, he'd have seriously considered getting the red robot some counseling. But it didn't work like that. And X tolerated Zero's antics, so that was good enough for most.

Tolerated? Was that the right word? Rekir wasn't sure. Certainly X and Zero were closer to each other than either was to anyone else. He supposed there was a flaw in his thinking. He considered X to be the top dog in the Hunters, not the human who was nominally in charge. That was probably because X was the father of all, the design on which all reploids were based. Zero, on the other hand, just… was. No one had ever considered basing a robot design off of him. He was terrifying and awe-inspiring in a different way from X. So, to most Hunters, X and Zero weren't on the same level.

Yet that's not how X saw it. X viewed Zero as a friend. He let him act as he desired—no, Rekir reminded himself, he was falling into the same trap again. X didn't see himself as master of anyone, even when his words carried enough weight to sway others to his side. If he saw Zero as an equal, he probably thought it was outside his bounds to try and tell Zero what to do. And no one else, of course, would dare to try.

Zero's eyes flashed open, focused instantly on something outside the transport. He watched it go by, then resettled himself.

That, Rekir reflected, was the other thing. Zero was always aware of his surroundings. He was always ready to be in combat, always ready to fight if it came to that. Rekir wasn't sure if it was paranoia or just hyper-vigilance. Either way, it had to be exhausting. It made Rekir tired just to think about it.

Zero's eyes opened again, more slowly this time. "There are many churches out there, right?" he asked.

"Right," Rekir said. "Most of 'em are organized into groups, called religions, when they believe the same things. The rest just do their own thing."

"Is Saint Simon's part of a… religion?"

"Yes, Catholicism."

"Ah. Some of what the priest said makes more sense now. Does Catholicism prohibit murder?"

"If 'thou shalt not kill' counts, sure."

"We kept saying Vanzetti cares so much for his religion. If he does, it wouldn't make sense for him to go around killing people."

Rekir shrugged. "I guess. Maybe that's why he went to Saint Simon's afterwards. He felt he had to confess the murder and get forgiveness."

Zero grunted. "How do you know so much about religion?" he asked.

"It's not much. It just seems like it because you know nothing. Uh… I looked at it a little as part of trying to be a good assistant squad leader. You get the occasional religious reploid in the Hunters. Lots of them think that religion's a human thing, but others…"

"What?"

"They say it speaks to them. Many religions are all about redemption and endurance in suffering and the promise of better days ahead. It's a pretty appealing message, given how our world works. Given… reploids."

"If you say so." Zero let it go. Most Hunters were aware of the precarious legal status of their race. Trying to reconcile their duty with the racism they faced was a dangerous game. As far as Rekir was concerned, it was a trap that led to madness. He'd known Storm Eagle and the other squad leaders that had followed Sigma during that blackest of days. He remembered how that conundrum had tied them in knots.

The worst accusation a Maverick could make of a Hunter was that he was a collaborator with the humans.

To keep from thinking about it, Rekir reflected, the average Hunter over-focused on his duties. By and large it worked. The rest were kept in line primarily because X said so. X said that, somehow, what they were doing was right. It was _eventually_ the right thing to do by reploids, he said. It was hard to think about. Taking someone else's word for it was so much easier.

The silence stretched out as the road slipped by beneath them. "Rekir?"

"Yes?"

"He said I have a soul."

"…and?"

"I don't know what I think about that. It bothers me, a little." He looked at Rekir with an uncharacteristically worried expression. "Do you think you have a soul?"

"I've never seen it," Rekir said. "That doesn't mean I don't have one, I suppose. I've never seen Antarctica, but other people say it exists, so I guess I have to give them the benefit of the doubt."

"That priest would say you have a soul."

"I reckon it's not up to him either way."

"Sure. I get that. But…"

"Did you ever think to ask him if he has a soul?"

Zero's facial expression alone answered that question.

"I mean, he would say he has one, sure. But how does he know? Has he seen it or felt it? Meh. I don't know. If there is a soul in here, it never tells me what it's doing."

"I think…" Rekir could see the effort Zero was putting into this, could see his mind being stretched in new and uncomfortable directions. "You wouldn't notice, would you? I mean, if your soul is part of you, if it _is_ you… It's not like you'd see some other thing that would tell you, "Oh, that's my soul". Right?"

"I guess," Rekir said. "But I don't know what I'd chalk up to a soul that I couldn't chalk up to my brain and body, and at least I know those exist. I think I know, anyway. Bother. Once you start digging into epistemology, you find it's a hole with no bottom."

Zero looked away. "I don't understand the concept well enough to… engage with you about it."

"We're out of time anyway. We're nearly there." He pulled the transport up to the side of the road. "Ever been to a morgue?"

"No. You?"

"Nope. First time for everything, I guess. What are we here for, anyway?"

"That rusted priest has made me doubt. I will know."

The slamming of the transport door cut off any response Rekir might have made. But it was just as well. He had no idea what he would have said.

* * *

The smell wouldn't leave Zero's nose. It was the reek of strong antiseptic, and despite the blowers vigorously pushing air through the small, sterile spaces of the morgue, the stench remained. From time to time Zero's combat subroutine sent him an alert. It reminded him that such a potent smell would reduce his ability to smell potential threats, and he should therefore be extra vigilant.

He didn't know how he could be any more vigilant than he was, given that his combat subroutines were perpetually engaged. Then again, not everything that went on in his head made sense. This wasn't the only function that "hung". There were several that continued to inject inputs that didn't match reality. Zero had learned to live with them, but they weren't pleasant.

He was preoccupied with the smell when the lab technician welcomed them into his sanctum. He was frail-looking and pale as any of his corpses. His mouth seemed to hang slightly open, but Zero couldn't figure out why. He could see no advantage to it.

The lab tech ran his tongue over his lips. "Welcome, welcome," he said. "First time seeing any of you Hunters in here."

"It's kind of an unusual case," Rekir said. "Usually, Mavericks are flashy enough that we don't have to do much investigating."

"Sure, sure." The man licked his lips again. Zero was no expert in human physiology, but he didn't know of any others that did that. He was sure it meant something. "And your name is…?"

"Rekir. And this is Zero."

The man cocked his head. "I feel like I've heard that name before. Maverick Hunter… Zero?"

Rekir shot Zero an amused look. It made Zero want to roll his eyes (he'd picked up that particular human idiom after seeing it so many times). Rekir knew Zero didn't care about fame, and made a joke of the fact that Zero was so well known. He didn't even need to make the joke these days for Zero to know when it was being made.

"Well," the lab tech said, giving up his attempt to recall the name, "Rekir, you and your subordinate should come this way." It was Zero's turn to smile at the surprised expression on Rekir's face. Zero usually had Rekir do the talking for the two of them, but this human assumed that meant Rekir was in charge.

Well, Zero wouldn't challenge that assumption. It made things easier for him. He looked sideways at Rekir and said, "After you, boss."

It was Rekir's turn to roll his eyes, but they followed after the human into the chill air of the corpse room. The lab worker was walking down a row of cabinets. His hand was extended; it ran over each nameplate he passed as he read them. He stopped; his hand hovered over a control console. "You guys see many bodies in your line of work?"

"Yes." "No."

The Hunters had spoken simultaneously. They turned to each other in confusion.

Lip-lick. "You guys wanna try again?"

"No." "Yes."

"Uh…" the lab tech was quite confused now. Zero sympathized.

"I guess it depends," Rekir hedged. "Any number can be 'many'. Neither of us sees as many as you, I'd wager."

"No kidding. I'm just asking 'cuz… well, have you ever seen a newbie cop brought in here for the first time? 'Specially if he's got a weak stomach and it's a messy case? Let's just say that keeping this place sterile is hard when people keep barfing everywhere."

"Well, you don't have to worry about that, at least," Rekir said. "Not with us."

"True, true. So, you guys ready?"

Zero didn't answer. He was having a sudden bought of nerves. Not because the prospect of death bothered him, or because of some superstition about corpses. Zero had killed too many to be nervous about dead bodies.

No, it was something else that was bothering him. He didn't want to see _that image_ again.

"Then heeeere we go!" said the tech. He was adding an affectation to his voice. Zero knew it had to be some cultural reference, but he wasn't plugged in enough to know what. "Let's open up door number one and show the good man what he's won! And iiiiiit's..." he pressed a button. The door popped open on cheap, underpowered springs. "A dead body! That's right, a dead body! Complete with depressed skull fracture, bone spalling into brain tissue, catastrophic brain trauma, and fractured cervical vertebrae!"

The tech looked up at Rekir. When he spoke again, his voice was even and clear. "That means her head got bashed in, bone splinters from the skull got shot into her brains, the impact turned her gray matter to jelly, and the force was so great it snapped her neck, too."

Zero nodded; he'd understood. In the language of destruction, his vocabulary was rich. "A single sharp blow, then," he said.

"Yep," the tech confirmed. With another button press, the metal slab began to extend out from its cubby. A sheet covered from the collar line down. The corpse was that of a woman—Zero was unskilled at guessing ages, so left it at that—brown hair, brown eyes open in surprise. In the middle of her head, centered on her hairline, was a deep indentation, a hollow space where firmness should have been. The skin and hair there were torn around the edges of the area, but by and large intact. It obscured the outline of the injury, as well as the fact that all of the important damage was beneath the surface.

Zero felt nothing. He saw nothing but the corpse in front of him. This constituted a victory.

"One blow," the tech said. "That's all it took."

"Who was she?" Rekir asked.

"Beats me. I try not to learn their names, or anything about them, really. Keep 'em as meat, nothing more."

Zero decided he could appreciate that. "So how did you decide it was a reploid that'd done this?"

"By the extent of the damage. I determined the pressure it takes to cause this much trauma over this much area, and back-calculated how much force must have been behind the blow. When the value was outside the human range, I knew it had to be a reploid."

"Had to be a reploid?" Rekir repeated.

The tech seemed to suddenly become aware he was speaking to a reploid. He shrank a little, but rallied behind professionalism. "It would have to be. A normal robot might have the strength to do it, but it couldn't break the Three Laws, and this is a pretty big break. But we know reploids can break the Three Laws, so…" he shrugged.

Zero decided not to say anything along those lines. "Is this the only injury?" he asked.

"Nah, she has some broken fingers, too," the tech answered. "Two on the left hand, three on the right. Hyper-extension fractures—bent backwards until they snap. The cops couldn't decide how that'd happened. Some swore he only hit her the one time. Others said he must have broken the fingers later on. You'd have to be a real sick puppy, though, to snap the fingers on a corpse."

"You don't think he did it before?"

"Well, between her expression, and where she fell, the cops think she was standing and saw him coming. Like, she saw him in the room before he hit her. Hitting her, they think, was the first and last time he touched her."

"And he couldn't have hit her and then moved her around?"

The tech gave a nasty chuckle. "Anything's possible when you're slingin' meat. Meat doesn't fight back."

Rekir's expression darkened. Zero didn't know why, but didn't want his partner dwelling on whatever had concerned him, so he said, "Can I see her fingers?"

"Sure, knock yourself out." The tech reached to the sheet and gently drew it inwards, revealing the body's arms. Zero reached out to grasp them, but the tech smacked his hand. Only iron self-control, and the knowledge that it hadn't really been an attack, kept Zero from retaliating. "Ah-ah-ah, no touching," said the tech, waving a finger. He was oblivious to how close to death he'd just come. "You're not sterile. You could contaminate the body. If you really feel the need, I've got gloves, though I'm not sure I've got any in your size."

"Fine," Zero said, frustrated and fighting down the urge to break the tech in half. "Do you have x-rays, then?"

The tech cocked his head. "What, you think I missed something?" he said, with a slight edge of suspicion.

Zero didn't want to deal with that. "No, nothing like that. I'm sure you've done your work well. It's just I… look for different things."

The tech's expression didn't change, so Zero glanced to Rekir. Taking the hint, the reploid said, "We completely agree with your take on how she died. We've got no stake in that. You're the guy. Zero doesn't know much about human anatomy, anyway. What he does know is reploids. We're hoping to learn something about the reploid that did this. That's why we're here in the first place."

The tech relaxed a little, but didn't get the x-rays. 'What would X do?' Zero thought as he tried to imagine the blue android in his place. What were the things X always talked about? He could almost hear his counterpart's voice in his head.

"Getting the job done is the most important thing. We're a team—all of us, from commander to the janitor. Don't believe me? The Mavericks killed everyone… including the janitors. We all have our places, we all have our roles. We must attack these problems together. If we do, we'll find that what's impossible for one of us alone is easy for all of us together."

Zero then remembered that most people didn't think like X, and that put him on the right track. He said, "We've got no interest in the credit for this. Anything we find, you can put in your report, and say you found it."

The tech thought about this for a moment, but Zero could see the effect his words had. "Alright," he said reluctantly. He went over to a monitor and started typing.

On the far wall of the room, a large screen displayed a series of pictures. The first four were x-rays of the skull, focused on the fracture and taken from different viewpoints. Below that were two of the neck, and three more focused on the brain to show where the different splinters of bone had ended up.

Zero's analysis subroutines started picking apart the new data. He focused his faculties on this task, giving over as much processor power as he could to it. His world became one of simulated strikes and blows and falls and bone fragments. Millions of lines-of-best-fit were generated, judged, and discarded. His eyes flit from one picture to another as he checked data or looked for new clues.

Zero had an internal chronometer. He rarely paid it any heed.

He became vaguely aware of a voice next to his head. He analyzed it for threat content, and when he determined there was none, tuned it out as unimportant. Another voice, a different one—Rekir this time. Okay, that one he'd have to listen to. Returning his conscious mind to the here-and-now, he turned his head to Rekir. "What was that?"

"I was trying to ask you for the tech," Rekir said. "He wants to know what you're thinking."

Zero didn't bother to hide his annoyance—it would be easier to think if he didn't have to stop and explain himself. He rallied. "I think you're right. The force applied is outside the normal human range," Zero said. "Or even the abnormal human range. We'll have to adjust your calculation to account for her fingers, but your conclusion holds."

"Wait, what?" said the tech, confused.

Zero scowled, but he saw a similar expression to the tech's on Rekir's face, so was forced to relent. "Rekir," he said, "if I attacked you with my saber, would you try to block or dodge?"

"Dodge," Rekir said, instantly. "I know I can't stop your saber. It'd rip right through anything I put up to block it, and then eat into me."

Zero nodded. "I agree." He raised his hands—palms out to Rekir, fingers in a spread in front of his face.

Understanding dawned. "So she tried to block the blow with her hands," Rekir said, "and it bent her fingers backwards as it came down, breaking some of them. But… that means she didn't think she was under threat until right before he hit her. Otherwise she would have tried to dodge."

"Yes," Zero concurred.

Rekir frowned. "But there was a full day between when Vanzetti was declared Maverick and when she was killed. Surely she knew he was a threat. How could he get close to her like that? Close enough that she didn't understand until too late that he was going to attack her…"

"That's a different problem," Zero said, turning back to the x-rays. "But this one is solved. Now… this blow was inflicted with the bottom of the hand, not a punch. The orientation is wrong for a punch—the wound is taller than it is wide. If it were a punch, it would be the other way around. Also, you can see the wound becoming less severe towards the top, as it curves into a pinky."

"You have a fine eye for detail," the tech said, with more respect than resentfulness. That was good, Zero thought. If Zero needed the tech again in the future, that resource would still be available. It was a decidedly X-ian thought. Zero was proud of himself for that.

He wondered if he should try to learn the tech's name.

"The other thing I noticed is that the attacker was probably only slightly taller than the deceased."

That got their attention. "How d'ya figure?"

"This was a hammer blow with the bottom of the hand. Such blows are delivered with a bent elbow, swinging from the shoulder. People who know how to do these things right also drop their hips as they swing, to steal a little extra energy from gravity." Zero went through the motions to illustrate what he meant.

"Cool," said the tech, "but how does this tell us the guy's height?"

"Look at the angle of the fracture," Zero said. "If the attacker is much taller, then even if he dips his hips—and there's a limit to how much he can—the angle of the fracture will be flat. Er, horizontal. His arm will have swung further by the time he connects. If the attacker is much shorter, the angle will be nearly vertical… though, really, at that point you'd almost want to use a different strike."

"But boss," said Rekir, and Zero saw the tech's surprise when he used the word—he almost smiled, but didn't-, "doesn't it depend on range, too?"

"Yes, but that helps us, because the same patterns are at work. Short people have short arms, tall people have long arms. If I were shorter than you, then even if I connected at maximum range my fist wouldn't be flat at the point of contact. I wouldn't be able to reach high enough to make it work. Same principle if I were much taller. If I'm too much taller than you, I can't connect anywhere other than the top of your head. The angle is always going to be flat, even close up."

The tech blinked and licked his lips. "And you determined all of that by _looking_?"

"Yes," said Zero mildly. When the tech stared, he added, "I'm good at certain specialized maths."

It was underselling the point to say that, he knew. Human brains did all their depth perception and assessment at a level below the conscious mind, by sight and experience. It was a powerful method, but almost impossible to duplicate. Roboticists had faced the daunting task of imitating that with math. It had proven very difficult. It was a banner day for robotics when a robot had managed to catch a ball, in real time, in three-dimensional space.

All that, of course, was before Drs. Light and Wily came along with their inimitable genius. And Zero had one advantage over humans in this regard. Humans never know the calculations that undergird their motor functions. Zero wasn't aware of these, most times, but he could call them up when needed.

If the numbers were needed now, to prove he knew what he knew, then he would provide.

"Hold that thought," said the tech as he scurried to his computer. "Okay, say all of that again, just so I can be sure to get it in my report."

Zero complied, but his thoughts were elsewhere. "Hey," he said, breaking the rhythm of his narrative, "could you pull up the x-rays for the first victim while I talk?"

"No problem," said the tech. "You gonna do the same thing for this guy, too?"

"Yes. And tell me how tall he is, while you're at it."

The pictures came up. The height was given. The injury was the same, but the angle was different, as was expected due to the difference in height between the two victims. Now with two data points to play with, Zero's brain started doing tremendous amounts of math. Step one was to determine a solution for the killer's height using the same method as before. Step two was to reconcile the two solutions—to try and come up with a "best guess" height that satisfied both murders.

He noticed Rekir watching him. The reploid was patient, but he clearly wanted to say something, and he just as clearly wanted to wait until after they were clear of the morgue. Zero nodded to acknowledge him before saying, "That's all I have."

Rekir turned to the tech. "Thanks for helping us," he said. "I hope we've given you some good data."

"Oh, absolutely!" said the tech, grinning widely. "Drop by any time."

Zero followed Rekir as they headed back out to their transport. When they were safely inside, Rekir shut the doors, but didn't start the engine. "Sir," he said slowly, "you've got something on your mind."

"Yes," Zero replied.

"Are you going to make me guess what it is?"

"I don't think you have to guess."

Rekir's eyes narrowed. "Why are you being so cagey, sir? This isn't like you."

"Sorry. That priest is in my head. He's making me think in circles." Zero rubbed his forehead, then turned to look at Rekir again. "I'm eighty percent confident that the killer of those two humans is between 155 and 180 centimeters tall."

Rekir nodded, then froze. "Vanzetti is two meters even," he said.

"Yes. Yes, he is."

Zero waited what he thought was a reasonable amount of time. When Rekir still made no motion, he said, "We need to get back." Rekir started, then powered up the transport to return to Hunter Base.

"So… maybe Vanzetti's not the Maverick?"

"We can't assume he is."

"Oh."

The streets slipped by in quiet. Those who say big cities never sleep aren't quite right. It's true that someone in a city is always awake. It's also true that a small enough fraction is essentially zero.

"Do you think it'll work?"

"Hm?" Zero looked at Rekir; his mind had been wandering. "What do you mean?"

"Say that I'm a human, and I have the power to designate Mavericks. Do you think you can convince me with your combat analytics alone? Is that decisive testimony? I mean, I, Rekir, know how powerful they are, but Random Human Person doesn't."

"Probably not," Zero allowed. "I haven't convinced myself, either. I said I'm only eighty percent confident in my range. I'd need more data to get it tighter. And we don't want more data."

"No, we don't," Rekir agreed. "But I guess we're jumping ahead."

"Yes."

"That, and the fact that the woman was surprised by the attack. Known Mavericks just don't get the drop on people like that. Is this what the priest told you? That maybe Vanzetti isn't the Maverick after all?"

Zero huffed. "That priest didn't tell me anything."

"Oh."

_That's not true_, Zero thought. _In his own way, he said enough. Enough to get me to take a step back and look more closely. What's his game?_

"I don't want to go back there," Rekir said.

"Me neither," Zero answered.

"Really?" Surprise was evident in Rekir's voice. "With me, it was because being in a morgue makes me feel like we failed. When humans die to Mavericks, we haven't done a good enough job. That's what it seems like. What about you? Why don't you like it?"

Zero grimaced. He didn't want to talk about this. He'd never discussed this with X, and Rekir… was not X. He had no complaints about his subordinate; he was careful, competent, and far better with people than Zero would ever be. He'd stood with Zero in the dark days of the First Maverick War, and that meant a lot. But… Zero somehow didn't feel like this was the sort of person you share your deepest intimacies with.

He wasn't sure what such a person would be like, he admitted to himself. Intimacy wasn't a big priority for him. He observed that other people did things like that, but he didn't know why. They seemed to be fulfilling a need he didn't have.

He _had_ seen a devastating example of when intimacy—or, at any rate, being too close to another person—had had lethal results. X had been able to know Sigma well enough to peer into his mind. That, in turn, had led (in combination with some heroics on Zero's part) to exposing Sigma's base of operations. For that matter, Zero decided, another example would have been Sigma's rebellion. He knew how the squad leaders would react to certain things, how they would position themselves. That had set them up for betrayal. They were butchered because Sigma knew the other Hunters too well, and they knew the real Sigma not at all.

There was something, there… awareness prickled the edge of Zero's consciousness. Ah. This was A Clue, wasn't it? He'd heard about those. Something subtle that led in the right direction, helped solve a mystery. Somehow, contemplating Sigma's slaughter of his own men was related to what was going on with Vanzetti. He didn't know what the link was, but it was there.

"Sir?"

"Sorry," Zero said automatically. "We need to talk with Alia. We need to know what she's found out."

"…okay," Rekir said. Zero saw the reploid swallow what he'd meant to ask. Zero hadn't wanted to talk about it, and this was as good a distraction as any. "Just so you know, she's due to go off-shift before we get back, and her recharge period is right after. They've been running her pretty hard trying to get Hunter Base all up round."

"Oh." That was something Zero rarely concerned himself with. Recharges were something that could happen when there was time for them to happen. Barring that, if he had enough power to function, then by definition he had enough to function.

Zero felt a sudden suspicion. "What about you?" he said, thinking he'd followed Rekir's unspoken lead. "When's the last time you recharged?"

"Before we went to Saint Simon's."

Zero pulled up Rekir's capabilities. "So you should have enough power for another few hours, but to operate at full capacity you should go down once we return. Is that about right?"

"That's what the manual says," Rekir replied.

Zero grunted. "I'll allow it. But we'll have a lot to do once you're up."

"I'm sure we will."

* * *

_To be continued..._


	4. Chapter 4

"Come here."

Alia looked at Zero in surprise. "Sir, I'm supposed to be going to the Systems shop to help us set up…"

"Not today you aren't," Zero replied, cutting her off. "You're with me. You're familiar with the case, so I need you, not the Operator I've been stuck with."

_Ben rusts me again_, Alia thought bitterly. She could see in her head what had happened. Ben hadn't done a good job reviewing force dispositions or recent events, hadn't reviewed the write-up she'd made regarding the ACPD report on Vanzetti. Then, Zero had asked a question, which Ben had flubbed. The easiest solution for a simplicity-oriented Zero was to go to the person he knew he could count on.

It should have made Alia feel flattered. Instead it just made her hate Ben a little bit more.

"I've pulled you from your normal rotation," Zero continued. "You'll be the permanent Operator for this case until it's resolved."

She _loathed_ Ben.

"As you say, sir, but I will have to recharge from time to time," she said.

"Your power expenditures are light enough that we should be able to manage. So," he said as they entered the Operations room and pointed to a fifth, heretofore unused console that was there to be the installed spare, "what did you find out last night about the report of Vanzetti going Maverick?"

Alia went to the spare console. Its functionality was even less than her usual—it wasn't intended to be a long-term solution. She put her headset on, felt the radio plug in to her normal senses. That, at least, made her feel better. She preferred being party to the traffic that passed. She didn't like surprises, and this helped mitigate them.

Glancing sideways at Zero, she said, "The short version is that it was an anonymous tip. The caller said he saw Vanzetti coming out of the victim's house with blood dripping from his hand. He said he knew Vanzetti personally, but was afraid of getting caught and killed himself if Vanzetti knew he'd contacted the police. He used a disposable phone and a voice scrambler, so there's no way to trace him."

Alia saw the displeasure on Zero's face, tried to head it off. "I'm only telling you what they said," she said.

"I know," Zero said. "I wouldn't want you on my case if you didn't. I'm upset with them. Is that really…" He cocked his head, closed his eyes, opened them. "I've seen the victims. The way they were killed, there wouldn't be a lot of blood on the killer. Definitely not enough to just drip off."

"I can't say I'm crazy about leaping head-first at an anonymous tip," Alia admitted. "But the physical evidence from the body is pretty convincing. The victim's head was caved in, more than any human could have achieved even with a weapon."

"I've seen it myself," Zero pointed out. "But… I don't think Vanzetti was the one to strike that blow."

Alia blanched. "You don't? You think the tip was wrong? And the police were wrong? So… then there's another Maverick out here somewhere?"

"Or something," Zero said. "If not Vanzetti, then someone, obviously. But I'm starting to think it wasn't Vanzetti. I'm starting to think that someone is trying to hijack our reactions. This person knows how the process works, and is taking it for a ride."

The words startled Alia. This was Zero talking! A Zero who'd famously said he didn't care why Mavericks did what they did. A Zero who was so fast and efficient in his use of force, it was hard to conceive of doubt ever existing in his world.

Alia could sense his uncertainty, wrapped up in the otherness he always presented. Somehow, it seemed to take the edge off of him. She'd been confused plenty of times. It was reassuring to know that he could be confused, too.

And without her mind preoccupied with the threat Zero presented, a different part was given more reign, and a new thought bubbled up to the surface. "Sir, are newbuilts still told how to contact the Hunters as part of their pre-release procedure?"

"X would know better than me," Zero demurred, "since he helped design those procedures. But I think so."

"I know I was," Alia said. She remembered back to those first few weeks of her life. Like every newbuilt, she'd received training to help her powerful but immature mind prepare for social living. The premise was hopeless—two weeks was barely enough time to teach the social implications of the Three Laws, let alone complex and nuanced things like manners, personal relations, and how to express one's emotions without getting everyone around you killed. But it was better than nothing.

An addendum at the end of the training was how and when to contact the Hunters. It wasn't until much later, after studying history, that Alia had known to draw uncomfortable parallels to human police states and their informants.

"I don't know if this helps us," Alia said, breaking through her reverie, "but something bothers me about that call. If it was made by a reploid, then it was intentionally misleading. A reploid would have remembered to call the Hunters instead."

Zero nodded, seeing where she was going. "Or it could have been made by a human who forgot the right number. How reliable is the human memory?"

"It's not great," Alia admitted. "People with "photographic" memory are outliers. Even so, the numbers to call the Hunters are everywhere. They're on billboards, posters, stickers, and ads. They're on TV and radio channels. The know-how is out there." She gave a wry smile. "And the Mavericks provide the motivation to learn the process. Anyone who lives in _this_ city knows the drill by now."

"So if it were a human caller," Zero said slowly, "it's at least as possible that he was trying to be tricky."

"If that was the intent, it definitely worked," Alia said. "Think about it. It took hours from when that call went in to when it got referred to us. Our average response time to Maverick incidents is under ten minutes. What was it this time? Four hours, from the time that call was received to when we showed up at Saint Simon's?"

A frown descended on Zero's face with such speed and force Alia could almost hear it. "How did we know to go to Saint Simon's?"

"The police relayed the report they… oh, verdigris," Alia breathed. "Another anonymous tip relaying Vanzetti's whereabouts."

"The same person?"

"That's the trouble with 'anonymous'," Alia said with a pained expression.

"I don't believe in coincidences."

Alia grimaced. "I have to acknowledge that they happen, but this does seem a little on the strange side. Most Maverick reports I've ever fielded, the caller wants us to know exactly who they are, so that we can protect them. Anonymity is… a weird thing to want."

Zero's expression was severe, but Alia was beginning to think it wasn't directed at her. "So that you know," he said, "there are two things I found out from the morgue. Two things that make me think Vanzetti might not be our Maverick. First, the killer was probably not more than 180 centimeters in height, and Vanzetti is 200."

"How do you know that?" said Alia, startled.

Zero's mouth opened and shut several times. Alia could almost see him trying to find a way to explain easily. "I'm good at thinking about combat," he said.

"Oh." Alia decided there was no profit in asking Zero to explain it. It must have passed muster with Rekir, so she'd accept it, for now at least.

"So," said Zero, trying to press on, "that's part of it. The other is that the second victim appeared to be taken by surprise. I don't mean it was an ambush. I mean that the attacker got close, and then turned on her. It didn't occur to her to run or defend herself, other than by last-second instinct."

"And if she was face-to-face with a known Maverick, that wouldn't have happened," Alia said, seeing his point. "That implies that someone other than our known Maverick was the attacker."

"Exactly."

Alia put a hand to her head. "This is so weird," she said. "Have the Hunters ever gone out of their way to try and prove a reploid isn't a Maverick?"

"Never that I know," said Zero. He looked pensive, suddenly, and Alia wondered what she'd said wrong. "I blame that priest. He… implied that we were looking in the wrong place."

"I thought you said he didn't give you any information."

"He didn't, he… ugh. I don't want to talk about it. He hurts my head."

Alia looked at her screen. "But why would Vanzetti go into hiding? If we assume that he's innocent, why did he run?"

"Because otherwise he'd be dead."

Alia felt a chill go through her. "Oh… right." Mavericks didn't exactly get the chance to plead their case…

"That doesn't tell us what prompted him, though," Zero said. "He ran for a reason. He was able to get away because he knew something was coming."

"I don't get it," Alia said. "If he knew something was coming, why not talk to someone about it?"

"He did. But the person he talked to…"

"Can't tell us what he said," Alia finished.

Zero's eyes narrowed. "I wonder… it might be time to talk to that priest again. Maybe… if I show him where we're at, he'll agree to help us out."

"Maybe."

"This is all about his protecting Vanzetti, right? Maybe if we show him we're trying to protect Vanzetti, too… but are we trying to protect Vanzetti? What are we doing here?"

"We're trying to catch a Maverick, I guess," Alia said.

"That doesn't sound right," Zero said. "I don't know. All I know is that I'm headed to Saint Simon's. Alia, while I'm out, run through Watkins' records. Find me data for all of Watkins' reploids and dumbots. I want to know how many of them fit our height and strength criteria."

"Why the dumbots? Dumbots can't override the Three Laws."

"No, but dumbots can be reprogrammed and can't resist like reploids can," Zero said. "The option isn't available to them. So someone could have turned one into a murder weapon."

"Yes, sir."

Turning sharply, Zero stalked away. Alia watched after him. He always seemed like he was going into combat, Alia decided. Like he could spring into action at any time. But he didn't. Whatever his inclination was, he didn't.

She'd been looking at him all wrong, she thought with a start. She'd always focused on how much he seemed to seek out a fight and lust after combat. And all of that was still there. But it must be so much harder for him _not_ to lash out. His brain was in combat mode 24/7, yet he confined his violence to direct combat during a Hunt. That had to be hard. She was suddenly impressed by his self-control.

He was still terrifying, but no one had a tighter leash on him than he had on himself, and knowing that was reassuring.

"So, what'd I miss?"

Whirling around, Alia saw Rekir looking groggily at her. She sighed. "Everything."

"Oh."

* * *

If Mace had eyelids, he would have blinked. Zero was back? That was odd. He hadn't expected that. Usually, someone who brought Zero's frustration levels to eight or higher was never voluntarily spoken to again.

This was worth keeping an eye on. Mace considered calling up Zero to see what he was after, but decided against it. They both had jobs to do. Clearing his vision, Mace went back to surveying the approaches to the church.

* * *

"I don't think Vanzetti killed those people."

Vito blinked, then smiled. "That's right, you get straight to business. Well, come on in. We should discuss this indoors."

Zero impatiently entered into the confining space. It felt too much like his recharge capsules—it shared the same feeling of imprisonment—and that feeling always made Zero uneasy. The books on the table, he noticed, were different ones from the last time.

"So," Vito said, sitting on the couch once more, "you think Vanzetti has not committed murder."

"That's right. I have some new evidence that suggests someone else did."

"Interesting."

"I think, with a little more information, I can prove Vanzetti's innocence. I don't want to see him punished for something he didn't do. I need more to clinch it, though. My word isn't enough."

"It wouldn't be," Vito said. Before Zero could speak, the priest raised a hand. "I mean no disrespect. I mean simply that the word of a reploid… Are you familiar with perjury?"

Yet another blank in Zero's database. "No."

"It's the crime of lying," Vito said. "Not that lying, in general, is illegal, though it is a sin. But lying while under oath in a court of law, that is illegal. There are a few other circumstances, but you get the idea. The law is supposed to force people to tell the truth when it really matters. Well, it only sort-of works. When two people describe the same situation in different ways, it becomes very obnoxious. They're both supposed to be telling the truth, aren't they? Or they're committing perjury."

"Right," said Zero, too caught up trying to keep the priest's words straight to try and read where this was going.

"But it still happens, and it happens a lot. It's called 'he-said she-said', or 'my word against yours', and it leaves the court in a sticky situation. Neither set of testimony can be admitted as truth without evidence backing it up. Then… along came robots. Robots can't lie. Order them to tell the truth, and they must comply. For a long time, lawyers and investigators focused on finding robots that could corroborate their stories. Or hiding ones that could falsify them."

Vito smiled. "And then, of course, reploids came to be. Reploids _can_ lie. It's perjury, of course, and robot perjury constitutes a violation of the Second Law, so is punishable by death, but it still happens. Nowadays, all testimony from reploids—and similarly intelligent beings," Vito said with a wave of his hand in Zero's direction, "is automatically suspect in a court of law."

"What are you trying to get at?" Zero said.

"Oh, nothing," Vito said with a smile. "Just explaining why a court wouldn't be happy with your word alone. If that's our thinking, though, we really should be as suspicious of the uncorroborated word of one human."

"You know an awful lot about law for someone who's not a lawyer," Zero said.

"One of my best friends is a lawyer."

"Mr. Slate?" Zero said, shooting blind.

"That's him. My other best friend's a Jesuit. Between the two of them, I have a lot of practice in verbal jousting. I probably take too much pride in it, all things considered."

This had to be a strategy, Zero thought. Sensory overload. Flood the target with words to obscure which ones were important. Zero resolved to cut through it. "You're wandering from the point," he said. "That's why… My word alone not being enough is why I need your help. I need you to tell me what was said in that confession. That way I can work to find the real Maverick."

"Is that so? Zero, why do you Hunt?"

Zero felt his face flushing, felt his hands tightening. This was neither the place nor the person for this discussion. "That's none of your business."

"Ah… sorry." The priest actually did look like he regretted what he'd said. "I overshot, and it went to a personal level. I meant, what is the purpose of Hunting? Why does society have the Maverick Hunters?"

"That's the sort of question X is supposed to answer," Zero said, his discomfort rising.

"Come now, surely you've thought about it," the priest said.

"Why does it matter to you?"

"You came to me. You're seeking guidance…"

"I don't want guidance," Zero interrupted. "I want information."

"Same thing, to one way of thinking, but alright. You want information. I want you to think."

Zero scowled. A subroutine noted he was displaying far more emotion than he usually did. "I did some research overnight," Zero said. "I was under the impression that priests' duties are to lead people in chants and songs, to perform rites, and to conduct services. What does that have to do with me thinking?"

"I'll answer your question with another question. How do you know you're doing the right thing? What do you believe in?"

"I don't believe in some god, that's for sure," Zero said.

"Fair enough. But what _do_ you believe in?"

Zero huffed. "X," he said after several moments.

That seemed to please the priest greatly. "Really!" he said, with a cheerful expression Zero found obnoxious. "Well, that'll do for now. Yes, that's good enough to be getting on with."

"I thought you said this wasn't going to get personal. And I don't know what that has to do with anything we're talking about," Zero protested.

"'Love God with all thy heart, and love thy neighbor as thyself.' That's the highest commandment we've been given. But what does that even mean? Who's my neighbor? What is love, and how do I express that love? These aren't easy questions. They're difficult, and they resist hours upon hours of contemplation. But they're immediately important, because our answers dictate how we should live day-to-day. That's why it's vital to be able to think about these things. Otherwise, you have no way of knowing whether your actions are right or wrong."

"It makes no difference to me what you think," Zero said. "If you think I'm acting right, I don't care. If you think I'm acting wrong, I still don't care. Your commandments are not mine."

"You say that, but you yourself admit you haven't thought about it. Are you sure? How would you know? Because if someone hasn't thought about it, or couldn't figure it out, the only way to decide is to talk to others whom one trusts."

"Are you trying to make me angry?" Zero said.

"It's a price I'm willing to pay if it makes you think."

"I'm not here to think!" Zero shouted. "I'm here to get answers you won't give me!"

"I hear that a lot."

"From who? Vanzetti? No," he said, before Vito could respond, "of course you won't answer that question. Look, I understand you're trying to get me to act in a way you think is best, because you think it'll help my soul. I get it. That's not what I want, that's not why I'm here. I'm here so that I can get what I need to keep this Maverick from killing more people."

"Are you telling me you want to protect people? Or that you want to stop a Maverick? Because, Zero, those are fundamentally different goals."

"The second thing makes the first happen."

"Are you sure? Is that always the case?"

"I am the one who destroys Mavericks," Zero said. His voice had dropped down low. Certainty filled it. "That is what I am. I have thought about this, priest, and I've defined myself that way."

"But you said you follow X," the priest replied. "That's not how X thinks."

"X needs me to be that person, whether he knows it or not. He's told me that it's hard work trying to love all different people, and sometimes he has to kill because he's not strong enough to save everyone, and that makes him sad. I will kill so he doesn't have to. I will give him enough strength that he can save more people than he would otherwise. I'll protect X's dream."

Vito seemed to mull this over for several seconds. "I sense you haven't come completely clean with X about this. I think you do him a disservice, not telling him what you do for his sake. As for the rest… well, it's a start."

"So _now_ will you tell me what I need?" Zero said with exasperation.

"Come now, Zero, you should know better. Just like last time, I can't tell you anything."

Zero found he couldn't even look at the priest without anger rising up within him. "What a waste of my time," he said. "I don't know why I bother."

"Well, why do you bother?" Vito asked.

"Enough of your questions," Zero said as he walked to the door. "You think you're so smart, playing all these games, spinning your words around. It really irritates me."

"I have little choice," Vito said. Zero heard some sadness in that voice, although he couldn't understand why. He didn't speak any more. He stormed out.

* * *

Mace watched as Zero exited the priest's home. He would have recognized that posture without his scope. Nine out of ten. That priest must really be something, he decided.

Zero stopped in his tracks. It actually jerked him out of Mace's sights for a moment. Mace refocused on Zero in time to see his lips moving. Lip-reading was a skill few reploids possessed, but Mace, who was used to looking at things through a scope, found value in learning it.

"Verdigris," he saw Zero say, "that priest is doing it to me again."

Zero ran back to his hover-cycle—not in such a hurry as to use his boosters, but enough to put an effort into it. It made Mace wonder if there was a way for him to see inside the priest's home. He had a feeling that their conversations were tremendously entertaining.

He sighed. Of course, they were probably _too_ entertaining. He'd lose focus watching them, and let something get past him out here. That would be bad.

He looked down, saw how much dust had accumulated on his feet, and decided there was no point in wiping it off.

* * *

It was crowded in front of Alia's console. Alia had rigged up an extra display while the other Hunters were out, and that helped, but not having the main screen available to them was inconvenient.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ben starting his shift. He waved at her and gave her a thumbs-up, an unkind smile on his face. Oooh, she hated that guy.

In moments of weakness, she wondered what it would take to get Ben declared Maverick.

"So… three reploids at the lab that fit our criteria?"

She gathered herself. "Yes," she said, answering Zero's question. "It's hard to suspect any of them, though. Two work the cargo end of the operation—boxing, unboxing, shipping, and so on. They never deal with the scientists directly. There's nothing to connect them to the dead scientists other than employer, and if their beef was with the company, there are plenty of other ways for them to show it. As for the third, he's got an ironclad alibi—he was down for maintenance when the murders happened."

"Oh, we know that now?"

"Yeah, the morgue got back to us with times of death. The third reploid was definitely getting repaired during those periods, I have documentation and video both, so he's clean."

"I went back to Watkins while you were out," Rekir said, jumping in. "I was pursuing your dumbot-reprogramming theory. They keep records, as you'd expect, for all the bots who come through. Out of all the dumbots Watkins handled in the past year, they're able to account for ninety-six out of a hundred. Ninety-six either got repackaged and sent off, or are still in storage. The other four didn't survive the testing, so got written off."

"So those four… assuming there's a competent tech out there with spare parts, he could have gotten his hands on those, right?"

Rekir held up two fingers. "Nah, there are two reasons that'd be hard. First, some of the reprocessing of broken bots is done on-site. The rest of the scrap is shipped out in bulk. It's never in an exposed location. It goes direct from the labs to the cargo hold, and the hold dumps onto the truck that takes them away. If someone skimmed parts, it'd still be an inside job."

"At least that keeps the suspect pool low," Zero said. "I don't want to think about what we'd have to do if these parts were available to everyone."

"It wouldn't do anything, because there'd be no motive connecting the murders," Rekir said. "If you had nothing to do with a company, what's your angle stealing its parts to kill its scientists?"

"I don't know," Zero admitted. "We'd have to look further into it."

"But it's all moot anyway," Rekir said, "because even if you could fix up a dumbot from Watkins to do this, you still couldn't. See, they're unpowered. Power distribution and storage is the most expensive part of these dumbots—it's the second most expensive part of us, after our brains—and Watkins doesn't want those getting wrecked in testing. Ninety percent of the dumbots that go through the range are rigged to use external power only. The remaining ten percent have their power supplies recovered when testing wraps up. That was one of the things Vanzetti had a reputation for being good at, actually—making sure the power cables never got in the way."

Zero frowned. "So even if someone made off with a dumbot, he couldn't power it."

"Well, he could," said Alia. "I can think of a few ways to do it. It'd just be hard to pull off. And not very discrete. A little too obvious for a murder weapon, I'd say."

"I don't want to let this go," Zero said. "Alia, do we have any schematics for these dumbots? I want to know if their fists are even the right sizes or shapes to give the wound we saw."

"Coming right up," she replied crisply. An image popped up on her second display.

"That would fit the profile," Zero said. "Yeah, the profile's not very exclusive, but at least we know this is still possible."

"I thought we just ruled it out," said a confused Rekir.

"Well… sure." Zero's words did not match his expression.

"By the way…" Rekir's voice tailed off. Alia knew what was coming—Rekir had complained about it to her while Zero was out—and she grimaced in sympathy. "I had to go to a meeting while you were chatting with the priest."

Alia watched the two robots' faces. Rekir seemed to expect thanks or appreciation for doing that. Zero's face was blank—as if Rekir had done no more than his job. Alia was thankful, again, that she wasn't on Zero's team full time.

Giving up, Rekir said, "The CO was asking around for the 0th Squad. He wanted to make sure we were taking the case seriously."

"I only take things seriously," Zero said seriously.

Rekir grinned slightly. "I know that. But he doesn't. And when the commanding officer has an opinion… well, he wanted to know why we weren't pursuing Vanzetti."

"We are pursuing Vanzetti," Zero protested.

"That's what I said. But then he asked me where we'd looked for him, and when, and I was stuck. So I said, well, we're pursuing other avenues. You know, the usual dance—lots of vagues, lots of in-progresses and underways and we're-working-on-its."

Zero waved his hand for Rekir to go on.

"Well… it didn't really work. Apparently Watkins is all over him about this—if this goes on too long they'll have to close up shop and sequester their workers. I don't think I need to say this, but that's a little expensive. They don't want to do that. They've been scrambling to keep tabs on their workers since this started, but it's really hard for a company to try and do that sort of thing, and it's definitely not profitable. So they're trying to make sure we're going after this as hard as we can."

"Of course we are," said Zero. "I don't know what else you could tell him."

Rekir shifted uncomfortably. "You never got involved in our squad assessments, did you?"

"What for?" Zero said.

Rekir covered his face with his palm. "You wouldn't, would you? You've always been the best at everything." He settled himself back down. "Okay. Every Hunter squad gets assessed quarterly. The Commander has to get the data together so he can report to MOI—sorry, it's Office of Reploid Relations now, isn't it? Anyway, he has to put together a report for ORR on the Hunters as a whole, and on the different squads. He has to grade their performances."

Zero seemed taken aback. "You mean other people… deciding how well I Hunted?"

"Yeah."

Zero looked like he'd bitten into something bitter.

"They don't look at number of cases handled, since part of that's luck and there's some selection bias there. Instead they look case-by-case. How long did it take to respond? How much damage did the Maverick inflict before getting stopped? That one's normalized to the Maverick's capabilities. How much collateral damage was involved? You get the idea."

"Yeah. So… what?"

"Don't you see? Think how fast most Maverick incidents get resolved! It's measured in hours. We're in days. That's not good. If they measure our performance in time, and it takes a long time for us to solve this, then… the Commander will think we're not taking this seriously. And then he'll give the case to a different squad."

"No. This is mine." Zero's eyes flashed with anger.

Alia felt the emotion emanating from Zero. She searched her records—yes, it was a fact that Zero had completed every Hunt he'd ever been assigned to. He'd never failed, nor been scratched from a Hunt because of damage or performance. It was the only perfect record on file.

Well, sort of. He did die during the First Maverick War, but that didn't count. And X's record was clean, too, but he had less time in service and he didn't really count either. Sigma's record _definitely_ didn't count. Zero kept spectacular company no matter how you sliced it.

"I get it, sir," said Rekir, and he was finally starting to sound exasperated, "but that's why we need to hurry. If this gets handed over to another squad, they're not going to know or be as concerned as we are about what's going on. Their directive will be, "Hunt Vanzetti," and they won't have done the math on the killing blows and they won't have talked to Vito Cherup and they'll have the Commander riding them hard to finish this quick. They'll kill Vanzetti just to get him off their backs."

Alia wanted to tell Rekir that he was wrong, but she couldn't. She had to agree with his conclusions. To her surprise, she felt that such an outcome would be wrong. She didn't usually… involve herself. A Hunt was a math problem: how to achieve maximum gains with minimum expenditures. It was complete in itself. It was something to be taken down from a shelf, tinkered with, and put back on the shelf when her shift was done. Somehow, at some point, this had become much more visceral.

Zero surprised her again; Rekir's words almost relaxed him. "In that case, that's not so bad. Unless he picks the 17th, I'm sure we could find the real Maverick before one of the other squads finds Vanzetti. And if he does pick the 17th, we're still fine."

It would have stuck Alia as arrogance if not for the matter-of-fact tone in his voice. Despite herself, Alia found she wanted to make his words true. "Sir," she said, hesitantly, "we're coming up on the point where Vanzetti must be running low on power. He'll either have to tap into the grid somewhere, or do something else that exposes himself. Barring that, he'll run down. If it helps, we can tell that to the Commander."

"Sure," Zero said diffidently. "But that's a lower priority. Right now, we need to focus on finding the real Maverick."

"How? What do we have to go on?" asked Rekir. "The reploids at Watkins are all duds, the dumbot theory didn't pan out—where does that leave us? There's no clear connection between the two dead scientists other than they both worked at Watkins."

"Did the priest give you any new clues?" Alia asked.

"Maybe," Zero said, slowly. "At the end of our…" he stopped, and appeared to search for the right word, "…_talk_, he said, 'Just like last time, I can't tell you anything.' But… he sort of did tell me things, that time. He told me without telling me. So, if this… talk… was just like the last one…"

He drew back in surprise. "He knew about the anonymous tip," he said.

"Huh?" asked Alia. "What do you mean, he knew?"

"He knows that the accusation against Vanzetti rests completely on that anonymous tip. I think he's backwards-telling us that the tip is scrap. 'All testimony from reploids, and similarly intelligent beings, is automatically suspect in a court of law.' Similarly-intelligent… like humans. 'We really should be more suspicious of the uncorroborated word of one human', he said to me."

"One… human," muttered Rekir. He shook his head. "Okay, but so what? Ay, that doesn't get us much further towards finding our mystery Maverick, and bee, we can't use that information. He didn't actually say it, and if he went to the cops or a judge he'd clam up. You know he would. They won't read the tea leaves the way we are, anyway."

"So we'll have to prove it," Alia said. "I… er… when I worked in reploid design, I knew a guy who worked in voice synthesis."

"Oh!" said Rekir, becoming excited. "Someone who could reverse the voice scrambler?"

"Of course not," she said, "those things do their job well. It's the aural equivalent of a hash algorithm, you can't reconstruct the original from the pieces. But… this guy's a professional, so… I think he could tell us whether the speaker was a reploid or a human."

"Good," Zero said.

"What good is that?" said Rekir. "What human would help a Maverick?"

To Alia's surprise, Zero smiled slightly at that. "That's the next problem. We'll address it when we get there. Let's keep our sights on what's in front of us."

"So," Rekir said, crossing his arms, "what is in front of us?"

"Go to the houses of the two victims. Look for any connections between them, or between them and a common third party. We've assumed Vanzetti's the link here, but we haven't looked closely enough. I'll be doing a similar thing at Watkins. Also, poke around and see if the ACPD's scenario checks out."

"You mean with the unopposed approaches?"

"Yes. It's hard to measure surprise, but if the value here is high, it means something."

"Why don't you go?" Rekir said. "You've got better combat diagnostics than me. You're more likely to pick up on that sort of thing."

"Maybe, but I'll be at Watkins," Zero said. The change in his voice and posture was noticeable, enough to cause Alia to frown at him. Was Zero… trying to hide something? He was clearly not in practice. Deception did not agree with him. "You also mentioned their recall procedures. I need to ask around about that."

"You're the boss," said Rekir with a shrug.

"Alia, you do the same from this end," Zero said, voice returned to normal. "Get a roster of the humans, especially the human scientists, and start drawing what connections you can."

"Will do."

Zero nodded curtly. "Report back periodically. We'll need to be efficient."

"Sir?"

Zero turned to look at Alia. "Yes?"

She didn't know what had prompted her, but she felt the need to ask. "That's not all the priest told you, is it?"

His expression was a carefully manicured blank slate. "I didn't understand the rest," he said. She wanted to ask another question, but she saw only his back, and gave up as he exited the room.

* * *

The security officer at Watkins could not have been more surprised.

Ten minutes ago, he'd let the red Maverick Hunter in.

Five minutes ago, the Hunter had somehow dropped off the security officer's grid altogether.

Now the Hunter returned, carrying a robot's head. He chucked the head onto the security officer's counter.

"It can be done," the Hunter said. Then he turned, long hair flicking elegantly, and walked away.

* * *

_To be continued..._


	5. Chapter 5

In Rekir's hand was the key the landlord had given him. The landlord wasn't used to this sort of thing happening in his apartments; he'd cooperated easily.

Rekir reviewed what he knew in his mind. Moira McCaskey, that had been the woman's name. Graduate of Nod University, Class of 21XX, bachelor's in basic robotics, went back for her master's in advanced robotics. Picked up as an associate by Watkins as part of a joint venture with the school. Single, seemingly career-oriented.

He didn't know what that would mean about her apartment. Humans were… odd. Rekir had witnessed a lot of variability amongst the reploids he'd seen. If humans were as different…

Rekir stopped cold as the door came into sight. He groaned. Yellow police tape stretched across the doorframe. He didn't relish trying to get across this without breaking it. He envied Zero's agility, sometimes. Humans' agility, even.

He opened the door and looked at the tape. It was waist-high. He grimaced. He lifted a foot, checked its height against that of the tape. He didn't like the math he was seeing. He put his foot down again and pushed on to the front part of his treads. His balance servos complained about it, and he wobbled clumsily. Even doing that, the tape was still at the same height as his crotch.

Sighing, Rekir settled back down on to his feet. Things just had to be difficult, didn't they? Well, he felt no need to preserve his dignity. He had nothing to prove.

He got down to his hands and knees and crawled beneath the tape. Awkward, to be sure, but better than breaking tape he couldn't replace.

As he stood, he spotted a roll of the tape on a table inside. Sighing, he closed the door behind him.

Almost immediately he heard a rattle and a loud complaint of "Tweet!" It wasn't like a bird's tweet, it was like a voice chip saying the word "tweet". It grated badly on Rekir's nerves. He looked to the source of the sound.

A silvery square birdhouse was posted on the wall, just past the entranceway closet. There was a small piece of glass for looking out or in, and a set of doors that were closed. The rattling and tweeting came from inside. As Rekir looked, he saw what looked like a small bird through the glass. It fluttered and pecked around the interior of the birdhouse, tweeting with noisy abandon.

Rekir walked forward into the hall. He spared the bird another glance as he walked by. Yep, a robot bird. Was this the sort of human who built robots as surrogate company?

He looked forward—blocking out the irritating tweets from the bird—and took in the living room. A couch and a cozy loveseat faced a television, all in front of floor-to-ceiling windows. The blinds on the windows were turned shut. Rekir saw chalk drawn over the back of the chair, but the picture confused him for a bit. Then he realized the head was in the seat, with the arms upside-down next to it.

He started to see how the police had come to their conclusion. She hadn't been sitting in the chair, she'd been standing behind it, facing the door. When the blow came, she'd fallen backwards over the back. If that was right, then the math Zero had done on the attacker's height was probably good, too.

He remembered the lab worker's comment on that. "Anything's possible when you're slingin' meat. Meat doesn't fight back." A growl tried to rise into his throat at the memory. Humans were many things, not all of them nice, but 'meat' was the wrong term to use for them. It was too close to the terms Mavericks liked to use to derisively refer to humans, like "fleshbag" or "ugly sacks of mostly-water".

Rekir hated any term that implied there was no brain in there. An intelligent brain was what made humans worth protecting. If he pretended humans didn't have intelligent brains, well, the same argument could be made in reverse—then there was nothing special about reploids, either, was there?

He tried to refocus on the scene before him. Sure, the tech was right—ugh, that infernal tweeting!—the body didn't necessarily start here, even if it had ended up here. But was there anything that indicated that had happened? And what would the killer gain out of moving the body?

He walked forward until he stood where the attacked must have stood, if he hadn't moved the body. This seemed a good enough spot for an assault. Was there anything here that would give him away?

He looked back to the bird as the tweets rang in his ears. No, the bird couldn't see over to this angle; the birdhouse's glass wasn't that large. What if the bird remembered who it had seen? If it had a log of people coming in, then he could cross-reference that with time of death—wonderful!

Potentially. Nothing, of course, said that the killer came through the door. Rekir was getting ahead of himself.

Regardless, the bird probably hadn't seen the murder. He looked back and started to scan around. He quickly spotted another casualty of the attack. A robot cat was at the foot of the entertainment center on which the TV rested. Well, it had been a robot cat at one point. Now it was scrap.

What a waste, Rekir thought morosely. The fur was lustrous and stripy, and the whiskers and face were awfully cute, even to a reploid. Rekir walked over and squatted down to get a closer look.

He might not have Zero's combat diagnostics, but he could see, and he could see the damage done to the robo-cat's neck. He put his own hand near it, molded it into the grooves made by the attacker's hand. Sure enough—the attacker had grabbed the cat's neck from above and squeezed until it snapped. If the attacker was about as strong as Rekir, it probably took several seconds to complete the kill. The attacker would have had to hold on and remorselessly squeeze as the vital components snapped one by one…

And the cat probably couldn't even defend itself. He ran a hand down to the robo-cat's paw and pressed on the pads of its toes. To his surprise, a curved claw came into view, rotating out from the upper part of the paw. Frowning, Rekir went to handle the robo-cat's head to check its mouth for teeth. As he did, his fingers came across a soft spot.

Rekir shuffled himself around to get a better look. Yes, the cat's head was damaged. Rekir put a finger into the soft spot—it fit just about right, and penetrated into the robo-cat's cranium almost a knuckle deep. Deep enough to hit its brain.

Deep enough to crush its memory cards, if he had to guess. That was the attacker covering his tracks. He was unfortunately clever.

Rekir ran his finger into the cat's mouth. Small teeth opposed his touch.

That bothered him. Most humans who owned robot pets—and that was a fair number; they were more expensive than domestic animals, but less messy—bought versions with no teeth or claws. Versions with no way to hurt them, in summary. This robo-cat had the capacity to defend itself, but hadn't managed it.

For that matter… Rekir looked at where it had died. A good three meters away from the chalk outline. Now he was stumped.

So there had been two attacks. In some order, the killer had crushed Moira's skull, and also killed her cat. If he had attacked the cat first—and his attack method would have been noisy and the cat would have fought back and it would have taken more than a few seconds—there should have been more than enough time for Moira to notice and, well, freak out. Getting the drop on her after that should have been impossible.

But if the Maverick had attacked Moira first, the cat should have intervened. It was a robo-cat, sure, but still a robot. And that meant… Three Laws gates. Rekir had no doubt of that. Moira was no amateur. She knew the rules; even a pet would have gates installed. In that case, the First Law should have kicked in as soon as the cat saw Moira under attack. The cat couldn't have known, just from seeing the one blow, that it would have killed her. Its directive would be to stop the attacker as best it could. Granted, it gave up ten times its size and weight to the attacker, but robots weren't permitted to make that kind of judgment call.

If it had struck back, wouldn't its body have been close to Moira's? Instead, it was as if the cat had tried to back away, tried to disengage.

Rekir rapped his knuckles against his helmet, as if to check whether or not his head was hollow. This didn't make sense to him. He knew how robots were supposed to act in the presence of humans, and this wasn't… consistent…

A crazy theory bubbled up, but he immediately found three different objections to it. Despite this he didn't discard it, but tucked it away into memory. He'd deal with it later.

His survey of the rest of the apartment was quick and fruitless. The only pictures Moira had kept seemed to be of robots she'd built. A few were of industrial dumbots like Rekir had seen at Watkins. More than a few were of the robo-cat, some with Moira in the frame, some without. A couple were of that obnoxious bird in the hall. ("Tweet! Tweet!") Humans were noticeably absent.

There was no way to open the windows in the living room. They existed purely for light, and were sealed to the wall. There were windows that could open in the bedroom, but they were relatively small. A human could have squeezed through, maybe, but this being a second-story apartment with nothing beneath the window to stand on, it would have been pretty conspicuous for him to come in that way, to say nothing of a reploid trying to do the same. Rekir also noticed that the windows were still locked. If the dust on the windowsill was any indication, they probably remained that way for long stretches of time.

Dice chattered onto the floor when Rekir opened the closet doors. He felt the urge to replace them but, looking inside, didn't know where they would go. The closet held the expected clothes, but also a number of board and card games. Which ones the dice went to Rekir couldn't tell. He did decide that she couldn't be that anti-social if the games were getting played. She liked people's company, she just didn't need them in her life.

Presumably the police had checked the door for signs of forced entry, but for form's sake Rekir did the same, even though that meant walking past the bird again. ("Tweet! Tweet!") He couldn't see anything distinctive or abnormal, and though he didn't have much frame of reference here, he felt that most measures one would take to force a door open would leave a little mark somewhere. He found nothing.

He went to the kitchen. He was completely out of his depth, now—human eating habits were terra incognita. After several minutes of puttering about, he admitted to himself that when it came to human kitchens he wouldn't recognize A Clue if it leapt out at him and did the hula.

That meant there was nothing for it but to try and retrieve that blasted bird. Walking to the birdhouse, he stood in front of it so that his face was looking at the glass. The bird went into a frenzy at that, screaming "Tweet!" at maximum volume and bashing its tiny body against the walls of the birdhouse.

"Hey," Rekir said, "can you understand me?"

The bird came to a stop, looked at Rekir, and gave a firm, "Tweet!"

Rekir decided he would never understand humans.

"Listen," he said, "I'm going to let you out. You're not going to run away, are you?"

"Tweet?"

Rekir sagged his head. "I'm talking to something that can only say 'tweet'," he muttered. "It can get worse… but not much." He looked up at it. "Listen, Tweety, I'll stick with yes-or-no questions, if I can. Tweet once for no, tweet twice for yes. Got it?"

"Tweet tweet!"

"Good. Alright, let's try this again. If I let you out, would you fly away?"

"Tweet."

"Good." Rekir opened the doors of the birdhouse.

The tiny robot burst from the birdhouse with a suddenness that made Rekir stumble backwards into the wall. Rekir saw it circling madly in the living room, tweeting frantically. It disappeared for a moment—Rekir guessed it was going into the bedroom, a guess that was confirmed when it reappeared and flew for the kitchen. After a few circles there, it returned to the living room and did another pass. Its flight path, Rekir guessed, was to let it search everywhere for its human master.

Collecting his wits, Rekir strolled back into the living room. He did so in time to see the robo-bird land next to the fallen cat. It gave two tweets, low and mournful. Rekir was struck with the crazy thought that it was mourning a worthy adversary.

The bird hopped and flew until it was atop the chair, bringing it closer to Rekir's eye level. It looked at him and very clearly gave a worried, "Tweet?"

"You're worried about Moira, aren't you?" Rekir asked it.

"Tweet tweeeeet," it replied.

Now that Rekir looked at it, it wasn't that faithful a reproduction of a bird after all. First was the color. It was a brighter red than any bird, and smooth. It was as if someone had taken a bird skeleton and candy-coated it, then varnished that glossy. The biggest difference was in the face. The beak was far shorter, and almost human-like facial muscles had been implanted, to give it enough flexibility to express emotions.

The bird was doing a pretty good job conveying sadness.

Reploids were based on humans. That means they had at least as much capacity for appreciating cute. Rekir, in a vacuum, would never have called that robo-bird 'cute'—he was of the opinion that there was a line between cute and obnoxious, and Moira had so badly overshot the line she couldn't find it anymore. But when he saw it standing there, lost and confused and alone, he couldn't help himself. His heartstrings went 'twang'.

"Hey, don't be like that," he said soothingly. "Listen, you're worried about Moira, aren't you?"

"Tweet tweet," it said in a voice like a sob.

"Do you want me to help you find her?"

"Tweet tweet! Tweet tweet!"

"I need you to come with me. I need to look into your memory. That'll help me find her, okay?"

"Tweet tweet!"

So it was something of a lie. So the little bird would never see its creator again. It was a small mercy that it would never know that fact. "You're a good bird," Rekir cooed to it, holding out a hand. It flitted into his grasp. "Can you power down for me?"

The bird contrived to give him a suspicious glare. "Tweet?"

"That's alright, you don't have to. You can stay powered up for now, if you want. But when we get back you'll have to turn off so we can access your memory, okay?"

"Tweet tweet."

"Alright. Let's get going."

Rekir walked back towards the door. Groaning again, he crawled back underneath the police tape. The robo-bird buzzed over his head, tweeting inanely. He stood again on the far side; the bird touched down on his shoulder.

Before he closed the door, he spotted again the unused roll of police tape on the table.

_Verdigris_.

He could swear he heard the bird laughing at him.

* * *

"Are you sure you don't want to watch?" Alia asked Rekir.

The field Hunter's face screwed up. "No," he whimpered.

Alia rolled her eyes. "Wimp," she said, before slinging a tool into her right hand. With efficient, economical motions, she pried open the bird-bot's head, revealing a data port. A quick plug-in connected the bird to her computer. Then, because Rekir still looked pitiful, she unrolled some paper and covered the bird's body. "You can look," she said.

Reluctantly, Rekir turned to face the monitor. "I hope this works," he said.

"It should," Alia replied. Her fingers were already tapping at a keyboard as she navigated through the bird's file systems. "See? Right there. This is something Moira wanted to be able to do, too. It's a log of people the bird has seen, time-stamped."

"Wonderful!" Rekir said. "Bring us back in time to the time of the murder."

"I already did. Look."

Alia watched as Rekir peered into the spreadsheet she had open. "That one's the police," he said, "and that one… is five days ago."

"Well before the killing," Alia agreed.

Rekir put his hands on his hips. "That doesn't make sense," he said. "She didn't just die on her own."

"Maybe the bird just didn't see it," Alia said.

"That's the thing. Anyone coming in to that apartment would have had to come by the bird's cage. I checked the windows, they wouldn't…" he trailed off.

"What?"

He snapped his fingers. "Do you know who else isn't on this list?"

Alia looked at it, and saw what he was driving at instantly. "Moira," she said.

"Bingo. That means that the program only logs some people."

"Gimme a minute," Alia said. Tappity-tap-tap-tap. "That makes sense. There's a separate folder here—people who've been added to a 'friends' file."

"I guess she didn't want to have to deal with that thing freaking out over everyone," Rekir said. Alia easily saw through his dismissive tone. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes again.

"If I had to guess," she said, "I'd say that 'friends' don't get logged when they show up."

"So, it's a kinda-sorta intrusion detection feature. A way to keep track of strangers. Well, that's consistent with what we were thinking, right? This was someone who knew her."

"Yes," Alia agreed.

"And not just someone who knew her," Rekir went on. "Someone who knew robots. Really, someone who knew the same robots Moira knew. She had a robo-cat in her apartment. It was dead, and the killer had carefully crushed its memory cards."

"Which brings us back to thinking that someone at Watkins did her in. But Rekir," she protested, "we already went through this. The reploids at Watkins are clean. Her career before that didn't put her in contact with many reploids, either. Her master's was explicitly focused on dumbots, not reploids—she didn't take a single course on reploids. She didn't have classes with reploid students, either. And reploids hadn't been invented yet when she was getting her bachelor's."

Alia fought a wave of momentary disorientation as she read that last part. It was hard, sometimes, to remember how briefly reploids had existed. It always seemed like it had been forever—in her mind, it had been—when it was really less than a decade.

"But we know it's not a human," Rekir shot back. "Humans don't have the strength to do the damage we saw."

"I guess that's why Zero was hanging on to his dumbot theory," Alia said. "Maybe that's the real reason he went back to Watkins."

"That bugs me," Rekir said. "He's not usually… I mean, he doesn't communicate a whole lot normally, not unless he thinks he needs to, but it's not like him to try and be roundabout. We should give him a ring."

"Will do. Let's see, where is… what's he doing in the hangar?" Alia reached for her microphone. As she did, she saw Ben turning over his shift. He gave her a jaunty grin and then made an exaggerated yawn. Biting back the urge to swear, she keyed her communications. "Zero? Zero, are you there?"

* * *

Zero winced as he worked his way through the labyrinth of his memory.

He'd talked about it with X before. A so-so memory is like a pool: it reflects unclear impressions of true events, enough to give a sense of what those were even if the details are obscured. A perfect memory is like a file system, categorized and accessible.

Zero's memory was more like a house of mirrors after being attacked by a glass-hating vandal.

Not all of it was that bad. His short-term memory was close to perfect. But it was hard for him to tell which parts of his system were safe and which were damaged beyond repair. When it came to committing experiences to long-term storage, it was a crapshoot whether he'd ever be able to find them again—or, if he was, if they'd look the same the next time around.

Whatever had happened to Zero during his hibernation and awakening had left lingering scars in his memory. From time to time, bits of memory would surface unbidden, usually when he was recharging and at level-one awareness. Making new memories was fraught with risk.

It was a problem that defied easy resolution. Zero's systems were so alien compared to reploids' that repairing him was a hazardous proposition; there was no way to know if any replacements would be compatible. That was doubly true with anything relating to Zero's mind, where physical incompatibility was only half the problem; software compatibility was far more treacherous.

By all rights Zero should have died from accumulated damage long ago. But he was eerily similar to X in some ways. One such similarity was in the quality of his self-repair system. To your average reploid, it seemed borderline divine.

There was some evidence that it was slowly but surely restoring his memory. For starters, he could remember people's names consistently now. (That had been a source of constant estrangement during his first days as a Hunter. He realized, in retrospect, that he must have come off as awfully rude, when the reality was that he _couldn't_ remember who was who.)

Then there was the vision.

It was popping into his mind more frequently now—a frozen frame of destruction, bodies rent apart, and his hands covered in red fluid. Scarcely a recharge period went by where it wasn't lingering in his mind upon wakening. It was intruding on his waking hours these days, often when he least expected it. He'd been afraid it would show up while he was at the morgue, and it hadn't, for which he was thankful.

But for it to show up _now_, of all times…

Calming himself, he rode out the spike of pain that often accompanied the memory's appearance, and tried to trace where it had come from. He had been thinking about someone constructing a dumbot on his own, just based on parts spirited away from Watkins' garbage. That had led him to the problem of power. Well, he'd reasoned, one didn't need enough power to run the whole dumbot. What if you just needed enough power to run one arm?

Then the memory had come through and turned his world upside down. Yet this time, as Zero cautiously explored his own mind, a different recollection appeared before him.

_It's a woman's body. The makeup men must have put a lot of work into it, because Zero knows what explosions do to human flesh, and you can't hardly tell she's been at the epicenter of one. She looks dignified—that's the only word that Zero can conjure up. Nothing else really applies. Even dignity is a stretch for a corpse._

_He knows better than to say these things, because X always gets sad around dead people, and Zero has enough self-awareness to know that he has a knack for making that worse. Zero simply looks on, fully aware that the woman will never move again._

_X isn't that passive. He steps up beside the coffin, a familiar, sad expression on his face. "I told you," he says to the body as if she could hear him. It puzzles Zero, but he files it away as the sort of thing X does. X is special, and he has to be given special allowances. Zero waits to see what X will do next. _

_The blue android puts one of his hands around each of hers. They're much larger than the corpse's; hers disappear inside of X's protective grasp._

"_I told her I couldn't protect her forever," X says, though whether he's speaking to Zero or the world at large Zero can't tell. "And I was right. She didn't last six months past the end of the Second Maverick War. She still had three years of her term left, did you know that?"_

_Zero decides that one must be to him, so he answers, "No."_

_X's hands squeeze the unfeeling fingers of the body. "The very first minister of the Office of Reploid Relations. It was actually a demotion—she was acting Minister of Industry, and ORR is below MOI in the line of succession. But then… she wouldn't have had it any other way. This was the job she wanted."_

_X's shoulders sag. "She was on her way to a reploid integration conference. It was exactly the way to die she would have expected." He sighs. "She and I disagreed on a lot of things, but… she did respect reploids. For that, at least, I was thankful. Her replacement… well…"_

_Zero sees X struggling to come up with the word. He recognizes this behavior in X: it's what X does when he's trying not to say something unkind. Zero decides to help. "Is a jerk?"_

"_I wouldn't say that," says X, and to Zero he seems almost embarrassed to have had the thought. He shakes his head, slowly, as his eyes refocus on the corpse. "But that's no concern of yours, is it? 'It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.'" One more squeeze. "Rest in peace, Haley Paschal."_

_Before Zero's eyes, X releases his grip, allowing her mismatched hands to fall back into the casket._

…_allowing her mismatched hands to fall back into the casket…_

…_her…_

"Zero? Zero, are you there?"

Zero came back to himself with a start. He was in the converted hangar at Hunter Base, and people were staring at him. He realized that he'd stopped moving during his reverie, meaning he'd been frozen in the act of dismounting his hover cycle for… how long?

He didn't know.

Zero had a hard time caring what other people thought of him, but even he didn't want to be thought of as insane. Not with his reputation. He focused intently on his task as he finished securing the cycle. He pretended not to notice the gazes of the few Hunters still here so late in the day. Another call of his name over his transmitter interrupted him. "Online," he replied uncomfortably.

"Sir, Rekir. Can you tell us what you've been up to? We're stuck."

"Rekir, have Alia call up a picture of the first minister in the Office of Reploid Relations."

"…sir?"

"I want to check something." It was the most circumspect way Zero knew how to say it. He wasn't about to proclaim that he didn't trust his own memory, even when he didn't. He needed a little confirmation, that was all. "A full-body picture, if we have one," he added.

"It'll be ready when you get back to the operations room."

As Zero considered his memories, he decided this one was probably a higher-quality one. He would trust it, if he had to. For whatever reason, any memory with X in it tended to be sharper and more reliable. It was, in a vague, low-level way, unsettling to him. He valued X's company more than anything else, even being a Hunter. It stood to reason that his memories of X were clearer because X was so important to him.

But Zero had thought other things were important to him, and they'd slipped through the cracks in his memory despite his best efforts. Only thoughts of X remained pristine. It was as if, on this subject alone, his mind and the unknown purpose of his body agreed. X mattered.

Zero suppressed a shudder before entering the operations room.

"There you are," Rekir said. "Sir, you've been a little tight-lipped with us. Care to explain what this," he gestured to a large picture of Haley Paschal in life, "is about?"

Zero, in an atypical expression, smiled. "It's about giving us a new search criterion," he said. His smile widened. "A very narrow search criterion."

* * *

_To be continued..._


	6. Chapter 6

Rekir's hands flipped open the buckles to the case. An expanse of brass gleamed at him as the case came open. Delicately, for his hands were far harder than his instrument's, Rekir drew his trombone into his grip.

Another compartment held a small vial of oil. Rekir extended the slide and liberally oiled it. He ran the slide back and forth with increasing speed, spreading the oil until the slide moved without the slightest resistance. Pursing his lips, he raised the trombone and gave a few experimental toots. After each one, he reached to the side of his head and made ever-so-slight adjustments to the trombone's tuning slide. He repeated the process until the notes rang out even and true.

Satisfied, the reploid began to play.

It would only last about fifteen minutes, he knew. His design hadn't been meant to do this sort of thing, so he had no "chops". Soon enough, his lips would be too numbed by vibration to continue to buzz, and he'd lose control over the trombone's sound. A human could build up chops over time, but Rekir's design was too static. From time to time he'd toyed with the idea of getting a mod to give him better chops, but he didn't think it'd get approved. What need had a Hunter of trombone-playing skills?

He had some money stashed away that he could put into the effort, if he wanted…

In a way, though, this was best. He really shouldn't have been playing at that time. This was recharge time he was burning, and he needed it badly. Zero had worked his team deep into the night as they gathered information to try and support his theory. He hadn't released them until they were showing clear signs of degraded performance and power hunger. Objectively, Rekir needed to shut down. Yet here he was, throwing away that time to indulge himself.

So it was just as well that he could only go for fifteen minutes.

Out there, in the non-Hunter world, there were reploids who could play almost indefinitely. One of the consequences of reploids' having emotion was that they became very capable musicians—not just proficient technicians of sound, but feeling and living artists. Rekir had heard a story of a sociological experiment X had championed. Humans were told to listen to two samples of music. One, they were told, was performed by a reploid, the other a human. The subjects were asked to pick who'd performed which.

They'd proven utterly unable to—they did no better than blind chance. Sure enough, these days reploids were starting to get spots in the great symphony orchestras. Talent recognized talent regardless of form.

Rekir wasn't as high on it as X was, but he supposed it was better than nothing.

The music flowed and warbled. It was formless tonight, not following any particular song Rekir knew, just a wandering improvisation. On one level, Rekir 'knew' that the music came from him, it was a product of his brain and experiences; on another, he felt like he was merely a conduit for music that was already out there. It flowed through him into being, and then back into the ether.

He wondered if that was an argument for souls after all.

He felt himself relax. The music wasn't his, it wasn't his effort that produced it; the music was. He joined it briefly as it interacted with this world, rode with it, and then let it continue on. For as long as this lasted, he surrendered his will, and was able to see himself almost from outside himself.

This was crazy, he thought. Zero had assembled a mighty collection of circumstantial evidence—which, Rekir was pretty sure, meant he had nothing. Yet Rekir found it awfully compelling, and he certainly had nothing that could gainsay his boss.

This Hunt was getting to Zero. It was getting to all of them. Hunting wasn't supposed to be like this. This wasn't their mandate. It was supposed to be… supposed to be…

Rekir hung on a note, extended it, added vibrato, then did a glissando down the length of the trombone until the note died. The room went silent as the music vanished. Rekir huffed and pressed the metal back against his lips.

Maybe it was inevitable, getting cases like this. Really, most Hunts were almost purely reactive, very straightforward; they engaged only the lower parts of the brain. This one was demanding every part of their higher consciousness. It was… stimulating, in ways the others weren't.

In a way, you could say that this was the sort of case that really justified reploids being what they were.

He felt a little abashed at that; he missed a note as the slide slipped in his hand a little. Reploids didn't need justification to exist, any more than humans did. He didn't need to prove that they were worthy. Then why was he always so defensive?

The worries slipped back out of him. They drifted away with the motion of his slide. His lips were starting to sting—he wouldn't last much longer. Sure, he could probably extend things if he played less loud, or less high, or less vigorously… but where was the fun in that?

At least Alia was coming around. She didn't wince half as much as she used to, and she could answer Zero's questions without looking like a tube of toothpaste being squeezed. Baby steps. And Zero… well, he'd talk with Mace about him later.

Zero had answered one question on his trip to Watkins. When the company got the report of the first murder, they'd started a company recall. They'd contacted all of their employees to make sure the rest were alright. They'd called Vanzetti, too. And he'd answered.

So Vanzetti had gone runner no earlier than that. That checked with the Hunters' theory. It made no sense, if Vanzetti was the Maverick, for him to wait until getting that call. The trouble was he couldn't be ignorant, either, because getting the call sparked him to run. And he was lucky that Watkins and ACPD weren't on the same page, and that it took so long for the police to hand the case over to the Hunters. With less lag time, Zero would have taken Vanzetti's head off before he'd have left reploid community housing.

Every answer unearthed two new questions… it was exhausting.

Rekir let the last note diminuendo until it vanished. He drew the mouthpiece away from his lips, which had begun to throb. Reluctantly, he disassembled the trombone and returned it to its case. He gave it a wistful look before closing the case and returning it to its spot.

The effects of fatigue came on him full force now that there was nothing to distract him. He made his way to his tube and climbed inside.

Right before the canopy sealed on him, Rekir thought to himself, _So that's why the cat didn't scratch. Huh._

Then the tube closed with a hiss, and his conscious mind turned out the lights.

* * *

Mace had tried to shoo away the birds, but it never worked. Even by the standards of the species, the Abel City urban pigeon was a resilient and fearless breed. They perched nearby him—a couple tried to perch on him, until he shook them off—and went about their pigeon's business as if he weren't there. He didn't like it; he felt they worsened his cover. Motion draws the eye. Motion nearby something hiding draws attention too close to the hider. Short of turning his laser on them, though, Mace wasn't sure what he could do about it.

Motion drew Mace's eye, too. A police car drove up towards Saint Simon's. As he watched, the officers debarked and headed for the small buildings behind. Mace was told that this might happen. He was about to get on the radio to report it when his counterpart from the 5th Squad beat him to it.

"Hunter Base, Charon. We've got cops at Saint Simon's, and… there it is, they just arrested that priest. They're taking him back to the squad car. He's cooperating, but they've cuffed him anyway."

Mace shook his head. As frustrated as Vito had made Zero, Zero still went back to talk to him, and that meant Zero valued him. Mace knew that Zero valued X, and he'd seen what Zero did to anything standing between him and what he valued. It was a little terrifying, truth be told.

Mace wondered how much Zero valued Vito, and what that meant for the poor, poor policemen who'd arrested the human.

He felt a great swell of pity.

* * *

"Sir," Alia said to Zero, "priest Cherup has been arrested."

"I wondered if they'd go through with that," Zero said. "What's the charge?"

"Willful Negligence, and Manslaughter."

Zero frowned. "I don't know what those are."

"I can guess as to their argument. Manslaughter is… it's not murder, but a person died and it's still your fault."

"Ah," said Zero. "They're trying to get around his Vanzetti-isn't-a-person defense. But wouldn't privilege still protect him?"

"I don't know criminal law that well," Alia admitted.

"Nor I. I know who does, though. And I was meaning to talk to him anyway. I think he has a lot to tell me." Alia was shaking her head; Zero noticed. "What?"

"I'm getting another report," Alia said, holding up a finger. She put a hand to her headset—and then bucked her head and turned it, as if that would let her escape from the sound. "He'll be there soon, sir!" she said in tones cut short by pain.

Zero waited for Alia to recover. His Operator shook her head before looking at Zero with wet eyes. "Sir, that was the Commander. He wants to speak to you personally. The police have found another body."

"The third in three days," Zero said evenly. Alia wasn't too surprised at his lack of response, not after seeing him in action. Rekir, she predicted, wouldn't be that stoic. "Same modus operandi?"

"That's what the report said—identical methodology to the previous two: no signs of forced entry, crushing blow to the forehead, chalked up to Vanzetti." She rubbed her ear tenderly. "The Commander's… a little upset," she said.

"Then it's time to break out the big guns." Zero turned away from Alia. He walked out as Rekir was walking in.

"How are you always a step behind?" Alia said to the approaching reploid.

Rekir chuckled. "When you're Zero's second, you're always a step behind. Did he really say something about the big guns?"

"Yeah… what's that supposed to mean?"

Rekir smiled. "It means… X."

Alia took a half-step backwards. "X? He can… X will listen to him?"

"Didn't you know? They're like this." Rekir crossed his fingers.

"I mean, I'd heard they fought together, but…" A puzzled expression dominated her face. "I have a hard time seeing Zero as a friend to anyone, let alone to the legendary father of all."

Rekir laughed. "Don't tell me you're one of his fans."

"It's not like that," Alia said hurriedly. "I mean, as an engineer I recognize that his design is…" her thesaurus flooded her with options here, from 'inspired' to 'immaculate' and on into the sunset, "…_good_. Um. Very good. It's just… well, why would he need to be friends with Zero? He could surround himself with anyone he chose. He can't… like Zero, could he? Could anyone like Zero?"

Rekir's smile made Alia angry. "Listen to you. X is on a pedestal to you. I don't blame you for that; I find myself slipping there sometimes, too. But that's not how X sees himself. To be honest, I think he finds your attitude frightening. Sure, he could surround himself with any number of reploids who would be borderline worshipful. Is that what you want out of a friend, though? Worship?"

"You're putting words in my mouth," Alia said. "I didn't put it like that."

"I suppose. It was still your undertone, though. He could choose any reploid to be his friend, and any reploid would take him up on the offer, right? That's not an equal relationship. That's a king and his court. That's not what X wants."

"How would you know?" Alia said, lashing out to hide her embarrassment.

"I've seen X and Zero together, sometimes," Rekir said. "X wants people to think they're on his level. That's his comfort zone. To him, having enough power to wipe out half the Hunters unassisted… that's incidental, that's not who he is, it's just something that's there. He doesn't find many people who can look past that, or his legacy as the Last Great Lightbot. Zero's not really like that either. But the difference is that Zero's strong enough that he sees X as his equal. I can't tell you how much X craves that."

Alia pouted. "But he's _not_ equal. He's not!"

Rekir laughed. "You know, he'd disagree with you about that."

"You're making fun of me," Alia accused.

"Not really. Just…" Rekir shrugged. "They're weird. Any time I end up talking about those two, it reminds me just how weird. It's easy to forget, when you're relatively close. Then I talk to someone else about them, and the absurdity comes up again."

Alia made a 'humph' noise and turned towards her console.

"Don't worry," Rekir said. "You'll get used to it, if you survive as an Operator for too much longer. Those two have different rules than the rest of us boring ol' reploids."

"Listen to yourself," she said. "You just said X doesn't like people treating him as something special, then you turn around and do it yourself."

"Not to his face, though," Rekir said.

"Still, you're feeding the problem that makes him uncomfortable."

Rekir shrugged. "I can't help it if reality makes him uncomfortable. That's something he'll have to deal with, sooner or later."

Alia's gaze was in the direction of her console, but her eyes were out of focus. She turned. "Hey, Rekir? Do you think it'll work? Do you think X will be able to give Zero the help he needs against the Commander?"

Rekir laughed again, though this time Alia didn't feel threatened by it. "Alia… you've got the Avenging Angel and the Red Demon, side-by-side. Is there anything in this world that could resist the two of them together?"

Despite herself, Alia felt a small smile creep onto her face. "I suppose not," she said.

* * *

The Commander never stood a chance, Zero reflected.

As he rode his hover-cycle, he listened to the chatter on the line.

"…5th Squad will deploy to reploid community housing and begin their search for Vanzetti…"

That had been X's touch. It hadn't taken long for Zero to explain the situation, and X had come up with appropriate countermeasures almost immediately. They'd agreed that Vanzetti was almost certainly not still in community housing. Having 5th Squad search there kept them out of Zero's considerable hair, while creating the appearance of activity. It helped pacify the Commander, too.

It was the sort of thing X would think of, Zero thought. Creative use of the talents of others. It let them tell the Commander, "Yes, we're Hunting the killer," and have the words be at least semi-truthful. Barging around in reploid community housing wasn't going to lead directly to the killer, but it was nevertheless a vital part of the plan. Leave it to X. He knew how to get humans to do the right thing despite themselves.

Zero wondered idly what kind of conversation X would have with that priest.

"Zero," came Douglas' voice over a different channel, "construction's almost complete on number three. Number four will be done soon after. You know we'll have to take 'em on-site to do the recordings, right?"

"I know." This had been one of Zero's ideas. If you can't learn from the enemy, you're dead. Zero found value even in fighting Sigma—the stronger the foe, the more you learn, to a point. "Rekir is making the arrangements, work with him."

"Yes sir."

Now X's voice came across. "Zero, if you need any more help, I'm here for you."

"You've got your own things to work on," Zero said. "I've got this. It's not as if it'll be a hard fight."

"Be careful, Zero. You're treading awfully close to the line."

"You know me."

"That's what I mean."

"I'm very precise."

"Extraordinarily precise. But sometimes not accurate."

Zero rolled his eyes. "You don't have to worry about me, X. I know it's in your nature and everything, but I'll take care of it."

"Then I'll leave it to you. Good luck, Zero."

"Luck is," Zero replied. "And I am."

He dismounted his hover cycle in front of the police station. As he secured his cycle, he stopped monitoring the Hunters' working channels. He would need his full faculties available for this.

The priest demanded a lot from Zero.

* * *

"Did you know there are no jumpsuits with clerical collars?" Vito complained. His normally pleasant disposition was marred by some annoyance, and even a little bit seemed like a lot on him.

"Do you need that?" Zero asked. There were small holes in the thick piece of plastic separating him from the priest. Enough sound got through for them to talk, but it made Zero uncomfortable. Anything that reminded him of being stuck inside a tube, unable to talk, unable to…

He cut himself off before his mind wandered any further. "Do you need the collar to be a priest?"

"No, but it would be better. It lets people know what I am at a glance."

"Why does that matter?" Zero said, confused. "You're away from your church now."

"My ministry isn't tied to a church," the priest replied. "Put me in a plane, drop me in the ocean, shoot me into space, I'm a priest wherever I am. That way I can always help people wherever I go."

"Even in prison?"

"Especially in prison. But this? This isn't prison. This is a temporary thing here at the police station. Prison will be later, depending upon how things turn out."

Zero cocked his head. "Doesn't this bother you?"

The priest laughed. "Zero, my predecessors have suffered much worse than this. Over the years, we've been tortured, electrocuted, drowned, burned, hanged, and brutalized in ways that would make your non-existent stomach churn. Prison is nothing compared to their fates. I've no reason to fear it."

"I see," said Zero. "This is what you wanted all along. This is why you antagonized the government. You wanted to prove that you're a good priest, too. You wanted to suffer to prove your own piety."

"You wound me, Zero," Vito said with mock offense. "I'm not so masochistic as to view my suffering as a good thing. It's a sin they're doing, a bad thing, and I would be evil if I encouraged them."

"But you didn't do anything to avoid this fate, either," Zero said.

"Of course not. I knew from the start that this was possible. But you know, Zero, some things are worth it. I'll defy the law to stand on principle, and I'm not the only one."

Zero's eyes tightened almost imperceptibly. "About the sanctity of the confessional, you mean?"

Vito's eyes darted to somewhere behind Zero. Zero knew where he was looking. Security camera. There were several in the room. He'd mapped them out upon entering. They both knew they were being watched.

"That's one of my principles," Vito said in neutral tones.

Zero leaned back. He never was good at reading people. He could take in everything he saw about Vito—the way his hands were tightly clasped in his lap, the slight tensing in his forehead—and not be able to grasp what it signified. None of his body language signified attack, so his systems didn't put much stock in analyzing it. He'd been trying to learn, but it was proceeding slowly… too slowly.

"Do the cameras make you nervous?" Zero prompted.

The priest laughed, but even to Zero it didn't sound right. "My privacy has been a bit of a joke the past few days," he said. "I know you Hunters have been watching the church, and my house is inside your field of view, so you've been watching me, too. And there's more to it than that. Why, I haven't even been able to call my lawyer in private, and I've wanted to. It's been a little hard for me, I'll admit. I'm a rather private person."

He unclasped his hands, re-clasped them in reverse. "It was a criticism of me, coming out of the seminary. When I sat down with someone, I was willing to talk to them until they were sick of me, but making the first move was always… difficult. So much easier to just crack open a book."

"You do like your books, I noticed," Zero said.

"Oh, yes. My major attachment to the material world, if I must be honest. Digital editions are cheaper and more portable, but I do like the feel and smell of a paper book." He smiled grimly. "And paper is harder to censor. You have to wait for the next edition, and a comparison can catch you."

"You're awfully defensive," Zero noted. "Is being in prison getting to you?"

The hands loosened. "Maybe," Vito admitted wryly. "I suppose it's inevitable to have some anxiety about it. I knew it might happen, but it's not like I was looking forward to it. I'll just have to rely on God's grace to see me through."

Zero felt a surge of frustration. "No one has ever proved god exists," he said. "How can an uncertain entity give you strength?"

"It's a beautiful mystery," Vito said placidly.

Zero let out a huff. "I see, I think. It's a mind-game. It's a way of tricking your mind into giving yourself confidence."

"You think so?" Vito said.

"Yes," Zero said, gaining certainty. "This… religion business, it's like… making a face into a mirror, and convincing yourself that's what your face looks like. But it's not, it's how you made your own face look."

"Hm," said Vito. "So… you'd say that when someone claims to have glimpsed the divine, it's a product of mental bias? Seeing what's expected, nothing more?"

"Sure," Zero said.

"And when someone who's not religious has such an experience?"

"I'm not explaining every case, here," Zero said. "Just most."

"Ah. Grasping for parsimony, I see. Your argument should make conversions impossible, but let's take it at face value for now. Consider a man in a great trial. Faced with defeat, he redoubles his determination and triumphs against the odds. When asked how he did it…"

"…he credits god?" Zero said impatiently.

"…he says, 'I had that strength all along'," Vito said as if Zero had not spoken. "But answer me this: who gave him that strength?"

Zero shrugged indifferently. "That doesn't apply to me. Or any reploid, really. I _know_ how much strength I have. I know how many kilos I can lift. I don't need anything supernatural to help me fill my potential."

"Not all trials are trials of physical strength, Zero. I'm sure you know that by now. The point's the same, no matter what capacity of ours is being tested. And that means it applies to robots, too. So, what say you?"

"He developed his strength himself," Zero said. "He exercised and practiced and built it up on his own."

"And who gave him that potential?" Vito said patiently. "Who gave him those possibilities? Work ethic is a talent, too, an unevenly distributed one at that. I can look at such a man and see him using the gifts God has given him, even if he doesn't acknowledge it, and say, "God does good work". So, you see, all strength comes from God. It's just up to us whether or not we give him credit for it."

Zero snorted derisively. "What about reploids? Their potentials were built into them by Dr. Cain, working on Dr. Light's template. Does that make Dr. Light a god? The source of all reploid strength, of all reploid gifts?"

Vito smiled. "And who gave Dr. Light his genius?"

"This is a circular argument," said Zero. "You have to assume that god exists to see his hand at work."

"I wouldn't say you have to. It certainly helps, yes. But the old chestnut goes, "There are no atheists in a foxhole." Or, put another way, "One began to believe in Heaven because one had lived through Hell"."

"That's a terrible reason to believe," Zero objected. "It just makes religion seem more like a superstition. It's something people turn to when they have no better explanation, a catch-all for anything that's unknown."

"Religion has that function, also," Vito agreed. "The reality, though, is that more of your life is unknown- and _unknowable_- than you care to admit. The sayings I quoted… they're extreme examples. They're from times when the unknown, the uncontrollable, the strangeness and randomness of life came crashing home on people. The catch, of course, is that the universe is still as unknown and bizarre at all other times. We just don't notice as much, normally. We fool ourselves by emphasizing how much we think we know. Your certainty in your construction, for example, hides the fact that you barely understand the workings of your own mind."

Vito took a breath before continuing. Zero's eyes had tightened in discomfort. The priest didn't know just how close to home he'd struck. "Wisdom comes from knowing what one doesn't know, and the reality is that we know very little, particularly about each other. People's actions are strange and confusing. How can we truly understand each other, when we can see almost nothing below the surface? Science can tell you how a man's brain works, but it can't tell you how he thinks, or why. The uncertainty of the universe is always there, hiding just behind the veil of our perceptions. But in the same way, God is always waiting for people to come back to him when they need him. So when a person faces a trial, what does he do? He turns to God for judgment and strength and does his best, trusting in God for the rest, no matter what other people say about it."

Zero struggled to regain his balance against that avalanche of words. "That's not what I do," he said.

"I know. But there's still time."

Only the presence of people and eyes around him kept Zero from reacting as he'd have preferred. "I don't have to put up with this," he said.

"And yet you continue to. Why did you come here, anyway? I haven't told the police what I said in that confessional. If I told you, they would hear, so there's no chance that I will. What do you hope to get out of this?"

Zero calmed himself. "I'm hoping you'll let something slip if I keep you talking long enough."

"Honesty is always the best policy," the priest said, and Zero was unable to detect any hint of irony. "I'm glad you've been so straightforward with me."

"I wish I could say the same," Zero replied.

A distant look came over Vito's eyes in response. When he spoke, his voice was softer. "Two rabbits are hopping along, and both spring a hunter's traps, one beside the other. The first rabbit struggles for a bit, but the trap only tightens on him. So, in desperation, he gnaws off his leg and frees himself. The second rabbit sees him and cries out, 'How are you free?' The first rabbit replies, 'I gnawed off my leg. Now hold still, I'm going to go get help.'

"The first rabbit hops away as best he can having lost a leg, and eventually he finds a badger to pry open the second trap. He leads the badger back to the traps and finds the second rabbit in a pool of blood, barely clinging to life. The first rabbit says to the second, 'I told you I'd get help! What were you doing?' The second rabbit, tears in his eyes, says to the first, 'I'm sorry, I tried to be like you. I gnawed off three of my legs, but the fourth is still caught in the trap!'"

After a moment's silence, Zero replied, "That's a joke, right?"

"Some would say so."

Zero considered this. "To most humans, death isn't very funny. And I think most humans would say rabbits are cute. Even I know that a joke like that would be considered in poor taste."

Vito smiled. "Who knows? Maybe there's a joke book in this prison. I can work on it until the lawyers decide my fate."

"What, you don't think that… you'll be let out?" This sort of sideways-talking was difficult for Zero. "When people find out on their own what was in that confession, I mean."

"Perhaps. I don't believe it's up to me one way or the other. At least not now—my part is ended. Maybe now people will realize it."

Zero nodded; he detected satisfaction in Vito's eyes. "In that case," Zero asked, "do you need to talk to your lawyer?"

"I think you're prepared to talk to him on my behalf," Vito said. "If anyone asks, just be honest as you know me to be. I know you're busy Hunting, but I would consider it a favor if you did. I think you'd find him… stimulating, intellectually. He's more straightforward than me."

Zero's face turned cross. "Was there any reason for me not to go to him sooner?"

"Of course there was. I hadn't been arrested, so there was no need." Vito stood, leaving Zero disoriented; for a moment, he didn't know which layer of meaning Vito was operating on. "Thank you for coming to keep me company, Zero. Talking to you is always a joy."

A scowl was all Zero could muster. "I don't share that feeling."

That infuriating smile. "I know. I wish being pleasant was the way to do the most good. Alas, it is seldom so. 'Well-behaved women rarely make history.' Of course, the same is true for humans and reploids and androids, too."

"Someday," Zero swore, "I'm going to look up all these quotations you toss around so casually."

Vito's eyes widened in excitement. "Would you really? Wonderful! I can't think of a higher compliment. Thank you, Zero."

Somehow, the priest's gratitude was the worst of all. Zero turned and left, leaving a smiling Vito behind.

Zero still didn't believe in anything the priest had talked about. But, on the off-chance that there was a hell, he sincerely wished Vito ended up there.

* * *

_To be continued..._


	7. Chapter 7

Zero rendezvoused with Rekir near the beltway, and after a brief pause while they loaded Zero's cycle into Rekir's transport, the two of them left with a new destination in mind.

"Installation of the first two units is complete," Alia reported as they drove along. "We still have to do the recordings, though."

"I know," Zero answered. "We'll have a window to do it. We just need to be efficient is all."

"What about Watkins? They're panicked about what to do with their workers. They don't want a reputation as the company where scientists go to die."

"Tell them to do nothing. Send their workers home at the usual time. The plan doesn't work unless things look normal."

"Sir, could... you call them instead? Since you know the plan better?"

"Alia," Zero said, "are you _sure_ you want me handling public relations with a human company?"

The line was silent for several seconds, before a defeated Alia replied, "No, sir. I'll take care of it."

"Good."

When the transmission ended, Rekir smiled and said, "That was unfair."

"I thought it was accurate," Zero said, frowning. "It was nothing more than the truth."

"Sometimes the truth's unfair." Rekir gave Zero a grin. "You could have had me handle Watkins."

"You're driving."

"True."

Zero's face showed a little concern. "Did I do something wrong?"

"Hm?"

"You and Alia are making me feel as if I did something wrong, telling her to call Watkins."

"It wasn't something she really wanted to do," Rekir said.

"It's her job, though."

"Yes, and she'll do it, but Zero, people aren't fuses."

"Of course they're… oh. This is metaphor, isn't it?"

"Yeah."

"I hate metaphor."

Zero watched as the desire to explain himself drained from Rekir's face. They drove on in silence. It was just as well. Zero's mind was still spinning from his talk with the priest.

Rekir took their vehicle off the beltway and on to the ultra-highrise. Traffic was dense as ever, but the speeds afforded by the ultra-highrise were such that it balanced out. If their transport had wheels, they might have noticed the smoothness of the road. The rebuilding effort for the ultra-highrise had been a top priority after the damage it had taken in the First War. It was one of the best ways to get goods and services in and out of the city. Its reconstruction had been swift.

They didn't stay on the highway for long. Their destination was a suburban community far enough away to be definitely not in the city, but not far enough to be, well, far. It had allowed the planners to incorporate their own community, with its own favorable land and tax laws, while still clinging to the city that gave them all jobs.

Zero pointed at strange terraces of uniform-length grass, dotted here and there with artificial lakes and pits of gently-raked sand.

"Golf course," Rekir told him.

"Oh?"

"Uh… look, I think teaching you about religion is enough for these days, okay? I don't want to have to explain golf. It's complicated."

"Oh."

A sign stood beside the road they needed to turn on to—"The Luxury Homes and Country Club at Shady Grove", it proclaimed. A smattering of smaller signs lined the road behind it, decreeing in turn that trespassing, parking, littering, and noise were all illegal, and that golf carts were allowed on the course _only_. Zero felt his curiosity about golf dwindle at that.

The road was blocked by a gate with an actual guardhouse. The gate was wrought iron—at least, that's what Zero thought at first. Upon closer inspection, he saw it was a cheaper material, carefully painted to look like wrought iron. He didn't know what he thought about that.

Rekir brought the transport to a halt before the gate. The guard—in a very official-looking uniform with, Zero was sure, no legal authority for anything—looked at them suspiciously. "You're not expected," the guard said. "State your business."

"We've got an appointment at one-ten Maple," Rekir said. "I guess he didn't tell you."

The guard put his hands behind him. "Everyone tells me when they have guests," he said. "I have a list behind me. If it's not on the list, it's not happening."

"We're the Maverick Hunters," Zero said, annoyed.

"And if there is a Maverick incident here I'll be sure to call you," the guard replied with a nasty undertone even Zero noticed. "But there has never been a Maverick incident at Shady Grove, and I doubt there ever will be. This is a quiet neighborhood, a _decent_ neighborhood. Your services are not required, and they would unnecessarily bother our residents."

Rekir appeared thoughtful. "Say," he said, "how many reploids do you think work and live back here?"

"Very few," the guard replied haughtily. "There's no need for _their kind _in a nice place like _this_."

Zero preferred things straightforward and simple, which usually meant there was little room in his world for metaphor or imagery. When the guard spoke those words, though, Zero couldn't help himself.

It was as if racism and rich-man elitism were caustic chemicals, and when the two were combined, they solidified into a black, obsidian-like chunk of pure contempt. The guard had then picked up this substance and smashed it into Rekir's face. Zero was almost amazed that Rekir's only reaction was a slight twitch of his eye.

Rekir—with a smoothness born, Zero saw, of rigid control—turned to look in Zero's direction. "Hey, Zero," he said, "there was talk about deactivating the Sector U Maverick Hunter station, wasn't there?"

There hadn't been. Zero opened his mouth to say so, and stopped just in time. This had to be a tactic, he decided, and he allowed himself to follow Rekir's lead. "I'd say it's even odds," he said slowly, with effort.

"I suppose we can always go back to Hunter Base and tell 'em to go ahead," Rekir said. "If this place doesn't need Hunter support because they never get Mavericks, I mean. Incidentally, what's our projected response time to a Maverick incident?"

The numbers came easily to Zero's lips. "Here? With the Sector U station? No less than seven minutes, expected value of twelve."

"And what," Rekir said, turning to look back at the guard, "would our response time be without that station?"

Zero knew the correct answer, but if this was a tactic, a little embellishment wouldn't hurt. "Thirty-five minutes at the absolute earliest. A more likely number would be fifty."

Zero saw Rekir's tactic begin to take effect when the guard started to squirm. Rekir didn't let up. "As a thought experiment," he said, voice hardening, "how much damage could one Maverick do in fifty minutes?"

"That depends upon the Maverick," Zero said.

"What if it was one as strong as you?"

"No Maverick is as strong as… oh." Zero stopped when he saw Rekir shoot a glance back at him. Tactics again. Zero's combat subroutines leaped to answer the question he'd posed. "With fifty minutes, and starting here to keep people from escaping… These houses are larger than normal, but I could probably purge one of all humanoid life in ninety seconds. That's if I were to bother going room-to-room to be sure of my kills. Adding in ten seconds of travel time, house to house, and you'd be looking at thirty houses' worth of people exterminated. Keep in mind, that's fifty minutes after the first report goes up; I could probably do at least one or two houses before the response cycle kicks in. Add in another while the Hunters track down exactly where I am, and another as they try to engage… thirty-five before I had to engage the Hunters, I think, would be very easy to do."

The blood was draining out of the guard's face. Rekir began to open his mouth to speak, but Zero didn't notice, and he wasn't done answering the question, either. "I don't think I'd do it like that, though. A more efficient method would be to fire a few shots into the first story of each house along the same street. Plasma weaponry excels at starting fires. When fires start, people's natural instinct is to flee, and in this case, they would have to quit their houses or be burned alive. They wouldn't be able to run into the street, because that's the side I would be on, so they would flee behind, onto that golf course. Once there, there's no cover. When I'd hit enough houses, I would pass between two, and have an open field full of people to murder. Then I would simply repeat the process for the other side of the street before moving on."

Zero's eyes focused tightly on the guard, who quailed in his sight. "Using that method, I think I could destroy this entire community, unassisted, before any Hunter arrived to challenge me."

Rekir's demeanor slipped, and he looked almost embarrassed, but it quickly passed. His face was composed by the time he looked at the guard again. "But hey, that's none of your concern, right? Because you never get Mavericks here. So I suppose we'll leave, now, and tell the boss he can shut down the Sector U station."

"No!" the guard shouted. He tried—poorly—to regain his earlier arrogance. "I mean… no. No, that won't be necessary."

"That's how it goes, though," Rekir said. "If we can't do our job effectively, we might as well not even try."

The guard visibly swallowed. "I… no, don't worry. We like the Maverick Hunters here, we really do. Sooo…" Rekir made a circular gesture with his hand, as if encouraging the guard to go on; reluctantly, he did. "…so, I'll open the gate, and you can go about your business."

"Wonderful," Rekir said. "Thanks for cooperating."

The gate began to open. The motion was smooth, but a hidden speaker—Zero spotted it instantly—played clanging sound effects as the gate moved. The gate was open barely enough for the transport to slip through, as if the guard feared someone would try to sneak by on the Hunters' coattails. Rekir gently guided the transport through. When the gate shut behind them, it was at triple the speed with which it had opened.

"What a farce," Rekir said once they were clear. "He's guarded the privileged so long he thinks they actually deserve it. Like this is their right and his honor, instead of just a job."

Zero shrugged.

"And you!" Rekir said, turning. "Sir," he added hastily. "You didn't have to go that far. I wasn't sure if he was going to disgrace himself or call other Hunters on _us_."

"That's what you wanted, wasn't it?" Zero said. "To scare him?"

"You went way past what we needed," Rekir said.

"There's no kill like overkill."

After a moment, Rekir had to chuckle. "You would say that, wouldn't you?"

"Sometimes the truth's unfair," Zero said with a grin.

They actually laughed at that. "Sheesh," said Rekir. "There's no way that's funny if we're on any other Hunt."

Zero didn't know what Rekir meant, so he said nothing. "There we are," he said, pointing.

"Perfect." Rekir, ignoring the signs, pulled up on the curb in front of their destination. It was a house, large enough that Zero wondered how many families lived there. (It was hard for him because he had little frame of reference. His experience was mostly with reploid community housing, and reploids tended to be packed in like sardines.) Thinking about the sort of community this was, he reasoned that it had to be one. He struggled to digest the idea. And at that, he noted, it was about an average-sized home for this neighborhood.

"Let's go."

"Right."

The two Hunters walked to the front door. Zero let Rekir step in front of him; the reploid pushed a button, causing sound effects to play inside. Oh, Zero realized—that's what the term 'doorbell' means. Interesting.

After almost a minute of waiting, the door opened. As if to spite what the guard had said, a black-plated reploid looked at the Hunters, eyes wide in surprise.

"Hi," Rekir said. "I'm Rekir, and this is Zero. We're Maverick Hunters of the 0th Squad, and we're here to talk to Mr. Slate."

Zero nodded in agreement. "He's going to tell us where Vanzetti is."

The staring that followed was intense.

* * *

Alia kept her headset on as she left her station. The equipment was in the field, waiting on Zero's say-so to deploy. Watkins was informed if unhappy. And Zero himself was at Mr. Slate's, so there was nothing more to do for now. That meant she had time to work on a side-project for Rekir.

Here and there, pieces of Cain Labs survived intact, despite the Hunters' assimilation of the original structure. Several of the laboratories were given over to forensics and analysis, but one was left for off-duty use. This was surprising to rookie Hunters and other first-time visitors to Hunter Base. A large part of Hunter Base's population already spent long hours dealing with robots and robotics. Who would willfully spend more time with the same thing?

Alia knew it wasn't the same at all. For many Hunters, it was a form of therapy. They controlled all the variables, there in the lab. They built things that couldn't hurt them. It was safe. It gave them the opportunity to make something that wouldn't be immediately unmade. As destructive as a Hunter's mandate was, as much devastation as they saw on a routine basis, it was nice to see obvious forward progress somewhere.

Even X used the lab, often at odd hours when every reasonable Hunter was asleep/recharging. No one knew what he was up to, exactly, and the people who asked always seemed to bounce off without gaining any understanding. Still, it was a handy fall-back for the lab's other patrons. "It's good enough for X" was all it took to end most arguments.

As she entered, a familiar face immediately called out to her. "Oh, so you have a body after all," called a feline feraloid. "I thought you were just a voice."

Alia rolled her eyes. "Good afternoon, Tom," she replied. "You've seen me before. Your joke's lame."

Tomcat shot her a grin as his tail swished behind him. "And your precious reactions make it so rewarding." He placed down the parts that were held, gingerly, in his hands. Many feraloids didn't have the benefit of hands; Tomcat was lucky in that regard. Even so, he had to be careful. More than one keyboard had been ruined when an angry Tomcat banging away at a furious opinion piece accidentally activated his claws.

"If you say so," Alia said as she moved. She was headed to her locker to get the parts she was working on.

"I do, I do. Actually, I'm surprised you're still alive."

"Huh?" Alia shot the feraloid a look of confusion.

"What with you being full-time on Zero's squad and all."

"I'm not on his squad," Alia corrected. "I'm an Operator, still. I've just been tasked to provide closer support than usual."

"And you've survived," Tomcat said. "I'm impressed."

"Come on, now," Alia said, bristling. "He's not that bad. Rekir and Mace are members of his squad, too, and they've survived since before the First War."

"It's better to be lucky than good, I guess," Tomcat replied.

"Hey, just because he could turn _you_ into a can opener…" Alia shot back.

Tomcat was taken aback. "You're defending him? Weird."

Alia was almost as surprised, but she rallied. "I guess I am. Look, he's dangerous, I know that. But that's not all there is to him. He seems scarier than he is because he has a hard time dealing with people. Really, the amount of self-control he has is pretty amazing."

An amused look came over Tomcat's face. "Sheesh, what did he do to you? Did he give you a look under the hood or something?"

"No," Alia said firmly. "Nothing like that. I know I have a reputation for tinkering, but Zero's systems… are an adventure I don't think I'm ready for. Besides, I think that anyone who tried to pry into that subject would be in for a scary surprise."

"So you are scared of him!" Tomcat laughed.

"I'm not!" Alia insisted. "I told you, he has a lot of self-control. He has boundaries, that's all, and who doesn't?"

"Suit yourself," said Tomcat, though he didn't change his expression.

"Look," Alia said, "are you making fun of me for being scared, or are you making fun of me for not being scared because that's foolish? You're trying to have it both ways."

"And who says I can't? Both outcomes are funny."

Alia could see no route to victory, so she rolled her eyes and finished setting up her project.

Tomcat made no apparent move to get back to work, instead propping himself on the edge of his table and running a paw over the top of his head. (The gesture made Alia wonder. It was such a feline thing, and it was so un-self-consciously done, that she doubted he was even aware of doing it.) "Oh, did you hear about Ben?"

"Hm?" Alia said.

"Ben, you know, in the Operator rotation with you. He got pulled off earlier today."

"I did notice someone else was there when I started this morning. I was too busy to ask about it, though. What's the rumor mill say?"

Tomcat's face split in an eager grin. Like any closed, tight-knit group under high pressure, the Hunters had a robust gossip community. He leaned forward conspiratorially. "They say he crashed his Operator's console," Tomcat said.

"Really?" Alia said. "That wouldn't be hard, all things considered. Those things are held together with putty and paper clips. Everyone knows that."

"Sure, sure. But it was pretty bad, took almost a whole shift for Services to sort it out. The Operator after him in the rotation, Sal? She flat-out refused to relieve him until he had his stuff in order."

"Ouch."

"Tell me about it. He had to time-share with the other Operators on duty while Services was working. It didn't exactly make him popular."

Alia noticed Tomcat giving her a very careful appraisal. She made a point of ignoring it. "But it wasn't his fault, was it? These things happen."

"That's not what the Services guy told me. He said it looked like someone had been messing with his getup. It was deliberate monkeying around. And it had to have been Ben, 'cause he was at his console the whole time he was on watch, and no one else came by while he was there, and things didn't go haywire until after he'd been on for two hours."

"Huh," Alia huffed. "I feel sorry for Sal."

"But not Ben?" Tomcat said, leering.

"It sounds like he brought it on himself," Alia said. "Hard to feel sorry for that." Alia didn't make eye contact with Tomcat during this, and she studiously kept her focus on her project.

"I guess you're right," Tomcat said eventually. Alia thought she could see the feraloid growing bored with her. With disappointment clear in his voice, he said, "Well, I guess I'm done for now. I gotta recharge."

"See you around, Tom," Alia said distractedly. Her fingers fumbled; they weren't really doing anything, anyway, it was just for form's sake. She waited until the door had clicked shut before she started counting. When she reached five, she looked around one last time to ensure she was alone, and then pumped her fist in victory.

* * *

Rekir sat on a couch that was so soft and squishy he didn't know if he'd be able to get out again without help. Opposite him, in a chair that looked far firmer, was Mr. Slate. To either side, filling out the four points of the compass, stood Zero and the black-plated reploid, whom Rekir now knew as Delphi.

Rekir's eyes scanned about as he took in the figures in the room. Delphi was a humanoid model about Alia's size, with no outstanding features other than what humans called a "baby face". Rekir knew better than to put much stock in that, though, as when those eyes focused on something they took on a shrewd, world-wise aspect.

Mr. Slate was taller than his reploid companion, and shared a similar fashion sense, with a long-sleeved black shirt and black pants, offset by a shocking white tie. His skin was sallow, and he sported more facial hair than Rekir had seen on anyone other than Dr. Cain. It was a black mustache-beard combination, but trimmed very neatly so that it extended barely wider than his lips. His hair was black and slick, and his eyes were blue and intense.

And then there was Zero, who looked as he always did, albeit with less patience than usual. His eyes were scanning around, taking in the decidedly expensive tastes of their host. Zero knew they had time—and Rekir knew they had time—but lingering here didn't seem to sit well with the squad leader. Rekir wondered how much trouble he would be in if they dallied here a while. He wondered, too, if Zero would be able to tell the difference.

"It's a nice place," Rekir said.

"Thank you," Mr. Slate replied.

"You do good work," he added in Delphi's direction. At that, Delphi and Mr. Slate exchanged a knowing, amused look. "What?" said Rekir.

Mr. Slate laughed. "Just so you know," he said, "Delphi here isn't what you'd call a domestic servant. He's a little sloppier than me, to be honest."

"Oh, come now," Delphi said with mock offense. "At least I'm not always leaving the bathroom covered in hair clippings, fleshbag!"

It was a nasty word the reploid had used, one typically employed only by Mavericks or those angry enough to go Maverick if a good opportunity arose. Yet there was no heat in his voice, and it made Mr. Slate's smile, if anything, a little deeper; he chuckled at hearing it. "Maybe," he said, "but I swear I am never letting you alone in the office again. Once you start trying to cross-reference, you leave things in such a state that no mind, in Heaven or on Earth, could sort it out again."

"_I_ could," Delphi shot back.

"Well, yes, because it's your peculiar brand of insanity, bolts-for-brains."

"Watch it, meat-sack!"

If this were any normal situation, then the room would at this point be filled with the sound of plasma bolts and splintering furniture. Yet the grotesqueness of the terms Mr. Slate and Delphi exchanged didn't seem to faze them. The smiles went on as they laughed at each other.

"So, then…" Rekir began, trying to get his bearings, "someone else keeps the place clean?"

"Yes," Mr. Slate said, recovering a bit. "It's the norm in this neighborhood to use humans. It's an expression of wealth, you see. Over the short term, humans are cheap, but long-term reploids are more economical. So, of course, they use humans here. It's a way to show off—they say, "I've got so much money, I can waste money just because I can and not suffer for it"."

"You live here," Rekir said, "but it's "they" who do that?"

"I keep a reploid on-staff myself," Mr. Slate said. "They're… not fashionable around here."

Delphi snorted.

"Okay," Mr. Slate said, "it's more like they're treated with a combination of hostility and hostility, with a side of hostility and a contempt topping."

"That's more like it," Delphi said.

"But not you?" Rekir said.

"He knows better," said Delphi with a wink at the human.

Mr. Slate chuckled. "Delphi here is my law partner in all but name," he said. "I thought I was getting a research assistant. What I got was an argumentative, competitive, nasty-minded personality, joined to a ruthlessly precise mind. A natural lawyer, basically."

"Mr. Slate!" Delphi exclaimed, misty-eyed and with a hand over his core, "you shouldn't flatter me so!" He turned to Rekir. "He always says the sweetest things," he said to the Hunter.

"Any prejudices I might have had didn't survive working with this clown," Mr. Slate said. "So, yes, to answer your question: I do have a reploid house-servant. And if I ever tried to treat her the way my neighbors treat reploids, Delphi would give her free reign to make my life a living Hell."

"There's an awful lot of wiggle room in the First Law," Delphi said with a grin. "If you know where to look."

"I get that," Mr. Slate said to Delphi. "I can appreciate that. But, really, is the sass necessary?"

"What sass?"

"She sasses me. You know she does."

"I sass you."

"Well, yes, but I'd expect that from _you_, scrapheap."

"And you know what? I told her she could, because you're all bark. You've got nothing. So long as she keeps the house clean, she can chatter how she pleases."

"She does keep the house clean," Mr. Slate admitted. "And I pay the power bills. And that's about all we can really expect from each other, isn't it?"

"Anything more's a bonus. Just think. Most people aren't privileged to witness reploid sass."

"You're perverse."

"I think," Zero said, speaking for the first time, "that X would be proud of you."

He hadn't specified who 'you' was, and the conversation withered as people tried to figure out what he'd meant. Rekir pounced on the chance to wrangle the conversation. "Mr. Slate, I see now that you've got more… kindly views on reploids than most people. Also, we know that you've been in contact with a priest named Vito Cherup."

"Yes, he was arrested recently, I heard," said Mr. Slate. Everyone could see Delphi's anger rising. Mr. Slate spoke first. "I know, Delphi. I know."

"It really gets me," Delphi said anyway. "They found a way around the clerical privilege problem by… by saying we can't have religion!"

"Reploids already have abridged rights," Mr. Slate said more evenly, although Rekir noticed a darker aspect coming over the man's face. "I guess it was only a matter of time before they'd take away that one, too."

"I know that it was never defined that we could be religious," Delphi said. "They never needed to have a definition like that before. Still, when questions of rights come about, it's not a dinky city-level court that gets to make that call. Rights questions go all the way up. This is a constitution-level question. It torques me that the regional court is dragging its feet issuing the stay."

"What?" said Rekir, losing the thread of the conversation.

The lawyers exchanged a glance and a smile. "Sorry," said Mr. Slate. "We were talking about why the police arrested Vito. A local court ruled that, because reploids aren't people, they can't legally go to confession. If they can't go to confession, then clerical privilege doesn't apply."

"My robot ass," Delphi swore. "The Church's got the right of free association. It's no business of the state's who a church lets in its doors. When the damn Church hasn't even decided whether or not robots have souls, where does the state get off trying to make that call?"

"Clerical privilege has always been an exception to the rule," Mr. Slate said. "Really, the state doesn't have to make that exception if it doesn't want to, and it can define it as tightly or broadly as it desires."

"Sure, sure, but that's for legislatures to decide, by writing laws. It's not something you can interpret your way around just because you're a court with an axe to grind."

"You've got nothing to prove to me," Mr. Slate said. He looked to Rekir again. "So if clerical privilege doesn't apply, then poor Vito's been withholding information for no good reason. That puts him partially at fault for the murders that have come after."

"And now he's in jail, awaiting trial on charges of manslaughter and criminal negligence," Rekir said.

"Right," said Delphi. "We've logged an appeal of the ruling, at least to get him out on bail, and the regional court is looking at it. The court won't issue a stay, though—it's letting the lower court's judgment stand while it thinks about the case. And that means Vito gets to rot while we wait."

"He lives for it, though," Zero said. "He'll be alright. I wouldn't worry about Vito. I'm more worried about Vanzetti."

Both Mr. Slate and Delphi gave Zero careful looks. They were all, Rekir knew, on shaky ground here. What had come before was just blather. This part would require trust, and that was lacking.

"What worries you about Vanzetti?" asked Delphi.

"He was here, at some point," Zero said. When it looked as if Mr. Slate and Delphi would speak he waved his hand to cut them off. "No, I can't prove it. It's not interesting to me, anyway, even if it does explain how he's been able to remain powered-on for so long. Ultimately, when and how long he was here doesn't matter."

"What does matter, then?" Mr. Slate asked.

"What matters is that he might still go Maverick."

Rekir noticed his careful language. So did the lawyers. "You're implying that he isn't a Maverick now," Delphi said slowly.

"Exactly." Zero looked at them in turn. "After three days of searching, I've come to the conclusion Vanzetti didn't murder those three people. I have a strong suspicion about who did it, but I can prove nothing. My fear is that when all is said and done, Vanzetti will end up a Maverick, even though he isn't one now."

Mr. Slate leaned back in his chair. He folded his hands in front of him. Delphi, frowning, spoke. "Anything we say about Vanzetti," he said, "would, in essence, tell you we've had contact with him."

"And that, in turn," Mr. Slate said, "would implicate us. We'd be on the block for aiding and abetting. Criminal negligence," he corrected himself before Delphi could, though the reploid tried. "Like Vito."

"But if you do help me, and I prove Vanzetti's innocence, you're guilty of nothing," Zero said.

"You can't prove anything to anyone that matters," Delphi said harshly.

"My plan will let me do exactly that," Zero said. "I already told you, I believe Vanzetti's innocent. If I'm right, you have nothing to fear."

"'The innocent have nothing to fear,'" Delphi said. His voice was bitter. "It's what every police state says."

"Delphi," said Mr. Slate, but the reploid shook his head.

"Not this time. Why do you think I was against it in the first place?"

"Against what?" Rekir asked.

"Nothing!" Delphi shouted. He crossed his arms and looked down, as if trying to remove the Hunters from his field of view.

"Delphi," Rekir said, "we're trying to save lives here. I know it's a risk, but we need you to help us."

"And why should I?" Delphi replied. "Look at this! Look at this!" He pointed around—at art, at furniture, at the nice things that filled the room. "I've come a long way, I've made good. I actually have a decent life, a good life! What would you prefer, huh? That I slave away my days on other people's projects, like Vanzetti? Or that I run around getting my ass shot off like you Hunters? No way. I've done better than that. I'm not throwing this away."

His fists tightened. "They tell you, in your socialization, don't bother trying to figure out where your brother models ended up. It'll drive you crazy. Well, I'm a sucker, so I did it anyway. Turns out, I was the fourth of five models in my line. Out of the other four, one's stuck at the bottom of the food chain at a university. He does fact- and plagiarism-checks on student papers, for crying out loud. Two more work the most basic and menial admin jobs for big businesses. And one… went Maverick."

He shook his head determinedly. "I won't go back! I'm not going back to that! That won't be me! I have a chance, here. I have a life! Do you know how rare that is? Do you know how few reploids get it this good? I won't let them take that away from me! And I won't let some damn Hunter guilt me into giving it up for a dumbass who was in the wrong place at the wrong time!"

"It's the right thing to do," Rekir said weakly. "Vito's already in prison for this. He's suffering for his conviction, suffering for trying to protect Vanzetti. He's doing a brave thing. You can be as brave as that."

"Yeah? Well, bully for him. But he's got it easy. He's a human. He gets the benefit of the doubt and everything. If they figure I'm making it harder for them, then…" Delphi extended his index finger and raised his thumb, and pressed his fingertip against his head. "Ka-pow! Vanzetti's reputation ain't worth that."

Zero took a step closer to Delphi, and though the smaller reploid kept a defiant face up, he visibly shrank back. After taking a moment to look Delphi over, Zero said with contempt, "Look down on Vanzetti if you wish, but he's far more admirable than you." Then he turned to Mr. Slate.

"I can't force information out of you any more than I could force it out of Vito," he said. "But Vito wanted me on this case. I think I'm beginning to see why. I've come to my own conclusions about Vanzetti, and I'm going to be certain of them, one way or another, tonight. Whenever I was working on this, as I got more information, I'd talk to Vito. This morning, he decided that I'd earned his trust, so he sent me to you. He wouldn't have done that if he thought I was a threat to you."

"Don't listen to him," Delphi said, but Zero ignored him.

"He also wouldn't have sent me if he thought I wasn't sincere," Zero continued. "I'm not a tool of the government. I don't do what it wants just because it wants me to. I kill Mavericks. I don't kill what some other person says is a Maverick. That's why you can trust me to save Vanzetti, if he lets me."

"I'm not telling them scrap," Delphi said heatedly. "And you shouldn't, either."

There was a pause, during which Rekir could see the gears turning in Mr. Slate's head. The human's eyes looked back and forth between the two robots before him, and then he sighed. "Alright, then." He looked at Delphi. "You know nothing about this. Of my own volition, and without Delphi's knowledge, I accepted into my household Vanzetti, a declared Maverick."

"Don't do this!" Delphi wailed, face stricken with horror.

Mr. Slate's voice got louder to be heard over Delphi's. "I hid him from the other residents of the house and they saw nothing," he shouted. "I provided him with recharge energy and spoke with him. During that time, he told me that he was going to the southwest residential district, to the home of one Aaron Carver, a scientist at Watkins Corporation. He had reason to believe a murder was going to be attempted there, and he was going to stop it. He said this to me, and me alone."

He turned his head to look at Delphi. "This should be what you Hunters need," he said. "Any consequences of my knowing this will fall on me only. Delphi here will take care of my house and all my possessions, should any negative legalities result."

It was hard for Rekir to see Delphi clearly, as he was turned mostly towards Mr. Slate and away from the Hunter, but he saw the lawyer-bot's form trembling. "You'd do that?" he said.

"Of course," Mr. Slate answered.

"That's not how we work," Delphi said, voice as fragile as spun glass. "No. No, this isn't right. We don't cut each other out, we don't..." He bowed his head, eyes closed, and then his trembling stopped. "What Mr. Slate forgot to mention when Vanzetti spoke to _us_," he said, "is that he was worried about getting there on time. He figured the attack probably wouldn't occur until 2000, but it could be as early as 1830, if the attacker was willing to take some risks."

Zero nodded. "Did he say who he thought the attacker was?"

"Only that it would be a problem," Delphi replied. He looked at Mr. Slate, and what seemed to Rekir suspiciously like a tear slid down his cheek. "There, are you happy?"

Mr. Slate smiled tremulously. "Very."

"Asshole," Delphi said.

"I love you, too," Mr. Slate replied.

Zero stepped backwards. "Thank you for your cooperation," he said quietly. He turned to Rekir. "It's time for us to go."

"Um…" Rekir shifted uselessly, before looking to Zero with embarrassment. "I think I'm stuck."

Shaking his head, Zero helped his subordinate to escape the clutches of the couch. They walked for the door. The lawyers did not follow.

"Catch the killer for us!" Delphi called.

"We will," Rekir replied. He turned, only to see Zero had paused. Rekir followed his eyes to an ornate cross, wrought of silver and stained glass.

"Huh," said Zero even as he pulled the door open. "Vito had one of those too. Simpler, though."

"That figures, I guess," Rekir said.

"I've been wondering. What does it mean?"

"Uh…" Rekir searched for the simplest way to put it. "Love. Ultimate love."

"Really? How?"

Rekir buried his face in his palm. "I think I'd rather explain golf."

"Oh. Never mind."

* * *

_To be continued..._


	8. Chapter 8

_Author's note: This is the final chapter of this story. Next week I'll post an epilogue with random thoughts and musings, as well as my direction for the near future. For now, enjoy the story._

* * *

The sun was down, somewhere behind Abel City's skyscrapers, and night was quickly coming on. The streets were hopelessly clogged with people coming home, going out, foraging for food, or plying their petty trades. Things were beginning to thin a little—it was a weeknight, so there were fewer members of the nocturnal crowd heading out—but it remained dense, and would for the next few hours.

From high enough, the city seemed like the inside of an organism. The city had needs; it consumed resources and expelled waste. Most- but not all- of the different little bits had to continue to work. A body can afford to lose some number of its members and still survive. The city wouldn't notice the loss of individuals until the damage became too great, until functions started to seize up. Even then, the city had demonstrated a robust ability to recuperate. Two wars had left damaged zones that, like scar tissue, refused to become part of the greater city again; the city had compensated by growing elsewhere, and despite it all trundled on.

Oh, the news might claim that losing a few people here and there was a big deal. At a macro level, though, it was a lie. Things would happily hum along, on balance. Sure, people might be scared or depressed or whatever at the news, but the city didn't demand that its citizenry be happy, only that they function.

The analogy fit in other ways, too. Moving through the city was a parasite, a being that killed others to satisfy its own needs. The immune system of the city wasn't working properly, as the parasite hadn't been identified and neutralized yet. The city was too vast, too unfeeling, to identify such a small cancer.

* * *

Or so, at least, was the general line of reasoning of the killer's thoughts. If they didn't follow those exact arguments, they explored similar ideas.

Where the analogy broke down was in the nature of the components. An organism is made of a host of different pieces and parts all crafted for distinct and discrete purposes. Once the stem cell has taken its form, it no longer has the option of becoming a different type of cell than it was before, and even stem cells are purely reactive, passive things responding to stimuli.

Not much is necessarily different about a city; there are certainly all manner of people who are reactive, passive creatures responding only to the need for money. But some actively seek to change their fate, and find that such a thing is within their power.

The killer didn't fully appreciate this fact. He simply grinned in anticipation as he approached his target's apartment complex. Beneath his long brown jacket, in a cavernous pocket, metallic fingers clinked against each other in sequence.

He hadn't intended for it to go this far. But the opportunity was still there—the window was still open—so he'd kept on going. This would be number four, once it was done, more than he'd imagined doing. He'd almost not had the nerve, and besides, did Aaron _really_ deserve to die? The first two, for sure, and the third probably. But Aaron? Maybe not, but... it was fun, and, well, he might as well keep going while the going was good.

Unable to keep the grin off his face, he hustled towards the door of his target. It was dark before he got there. All the better, really—it would mean a cleaner escape, and no one would be looking for Aaron until morning. The trail would be long-cold by then.

His only fear was that people would be too spooked to answer the door anymore. But, of course, they weren't. They were afraid of Vanzetti. They had no reason to be scared of him. Taking care to use his left hand, he knocked.

This wouldn't take long.

* * *

"He's coming. I have him in my sights. Too far for me, but Mace has a clean shot."

"No."

"But…"

"No. We play this out, Zero's way."

"But Alia…"

"Shut up."

"…yes, ma'am."

* * *

"I'm glad it's you," Aaron said, nervous relief dripping from his voice. "I don't know what I would have done if it had been Vanzetti."

"Call the Hunters, right?" the killer said.

Aaron didn't answer; he turned his back and walked down the hall. The overhead light in the hall was on, and a small light was on in the kitchen, but other than that the apartment was inky. "Shut the door, would you?" he said. "I don't want him to know I'm home. I want it to look like no one's here."

The killer did, smiling. Everything was playing into his hands. The door clicked shut, and the lock followed. The killer followed Aaron down the hall.

"What brings you by today?" Aaron said, turning to present his face to the killer. "What with these crazy times and all."

"It's about that, actually," the killer said as he closed.

Aaron took a shuffle-step backwards. "What are you doing?" he said.

The killer raised his hand. The oversized right arm, larger than its counterpart on the other side, loomed weightily in the hall. "Killing you," the killer said. He swung.

Aaron's eyes went wide. He raised his hands to protect himself.

The killer's smile intensified. He knew it wouldn't work. This had happened before. He knew the result.

And then the killer stumbled forward from weight and momentum. His fist had failed to hit anything solid. He looked up. Aaron was still there. He hadn't moved; his face was still a mask of fear and his hands were raised in helpless defense.

His body _flickered_.

The killer blinked hard. "What the…"

Aaron's body disappeared in a fizzle of photons. Zero flicked the lights on in the living room. "That," he said as the killer recoiled from the sudden light, "should just about take care of 'intent'."

He stepped forward. "John Meyer, doctor of robotics, scientist at Watkins Corporation, co-worker of Moira McCaskey and Aaron Carver," he said, "I don't have the legal authority to arrest a human. But I've established that you intend to kill other humans. In accordance with the First Law, I will keep that from happening."

The killer human's shock wore off quickly. His face, which had echoed his surprise, twisted in rage and panic. It was a cornered look; Zero had seen it before. It was the sort of look that comes over the outclassed when they've committed to an all-or-nothing course.

Zero did seem to bring that out in people.

The killer shucked his jacket aside, fully revealing his robotic prosthetic of a right arm. Lifting his fist one more time, he lunged in to smash through Zero as he'd smashed through his other victims.

Zero's eyes narrowed. Attacking Zero was the second most dangerous thing that human could have done. Zero raised his own hand and caught John's wrist. The force transmitted down through Zero into the floor. Indentations of Zero's feet were pressed into the wood beneath him. The human gasped at this result, but then bent into the attack even more, trying to force Zero down.

Zero merely held on. He was as immovable as a statue. No amateur would be allowed to think he could make Zero move.

The force exerted by the human's arm increased, more and more, as he demanded more and more effort from it. The force should have been expended into Zero, but Zero could not be moved, so it pushed _backwards_ instead, back into John's body. The prosthetic socket was never meant to handle this much stress; it was having to make up, in a couple centimeters, what is normally made up for with the shoulder and pectoral and back muscles. A human body couldn't withstand that much force. In the end, neither could the socket.

The arm obeyed John's orders as best it could. With a sound somewhere between a pop and a screech, the prosthetic arm sheared away from John's body at the shoulder.

John stumbled forwards, and in a blur of red armor and blonde hair Zero was upon him. The robot hoisted John off of his feet and secured the human's neck between forearm and bicep. Zero's knowledge of human anatomy was reasonably good, which from time to time worried him; he'd never had occasion to use that knowledge, especially with X telling him how murdering humans was wrong. For once, though, he was glad to know what he knew.

Manipulating his hold, Zero applied pressure to the carotid arteries running along each side of John's neck. The blood choke knocked the human out within seconds.

Almost as soon as he'd passed out, the door was smashed open. The locking mechanism came with it wholesale, along with chunks of the wall. "JOHN!" came a voice.

"Hello, Vanzetti," said Zero.

Vanzetti, all two meters of him, had bent down to barrel into the doorway. He unfolded himself as his confused gaze took in the two bodies before him. His momentum was gone.

"I have apprehended the killer and the police are on their way," Zero said. "You don't have to do anything, now. Not if you don't want to. However…"

He hoisted John's unconscious body into an upright position, facing Vanzetti. "If you wished to kill this human, I would not stop you."

There was no sound in the apartment, and only one light. It threw the room's occupants into long shadows. For a moment, the image of Aaron reappeared before kicking out for good; the hologram projector turned off, having done its job. Zero ignored it as he watched Vanzetti struggle with the choice.

The reploid's face was full of confusion. Zero caught his eyes. "This man tried to have you killed, and he used that window to kill three humans. In my mind, he deserves to die. If I were you I would certainly kill him. That is why you came here tonight, isn't it? To kill him to stop him? You didn't have any other way, since you couldn't prove your own innocence without a Maverick Hunter blowing your head off. You'd made up your mind to kill him instead.

"So here's your chance. This is your opportunity to get revenge. I would even call it justice. Understand," he added, "that I am still a Maverick Hunter, and if you do kill him I will have to kill you immediately. But you knew that was coming, didn't you?"

Vanzetti looked at John, his face pained and betrayed. "I trusted him," he said, tearing up. "I never… he… he killed Moira, and… and…" He took a step forward, but it was half-hearted, and he soon stopped. His shoulders slumped. "The police are coming, you said?"

"Ninety seconds out, per my Operator," Zero said.

Vanzetti leaned back and looked to the ceiling. His hands, which had been curled into fists, relaxed. "Then it's done," Vanzetti said. "He'll kill no more. That's good enough."

Zero released John's body; his head smacked the ground as it fell, making Vanzetti wince. "Watch out!" he said. "Be careful with him!"

Zero frowned. For someone who'd been contemplating murder, he seemed awfully concerned about the man he'd meant to kill. Oh, right. The First Law, of course. Now that Vanzetti had decided not to break it after all, it was imposing itself upon him.

Zero wondered, at times, what it would be like to have Three Laws gates of his own. But no. His creator, whomever that was, had had darker dreams in mind for Zero.

Zero never knew if his actions were confounding or fulfilling those dreams.

Before him, all strength seemed to leave Vanzetti. He fell to his knees, rested his posterior on his ankles. "I suppose… that's it, then," the reploid said. He closed his eyes. "Do me quickly. No need to draw this out."

"What are you talking about?" Zero asked.

"Don't tease me. I've been declared Maverick, and you're a Maverick Hunter. There's nothing left, now that John's been stopped. That's all I wanted. Go ahead and… and do your… thing."

"Stand up."

"Oh, that's how you want it, then." Vanzetti rose with a sort of willowy grace—for all his height, he was rather thin—but his eyes remained closed the whole time. "Don't make me wait," he said.

"Shut up. And open your eyes."

Vanzetti's face screwed up. "I don't want to watch you kill me," he said. "I'd rather it be a surprise. I want to be dead before I know it's coming."

"Watch me… I'm not going to kill you, dumbot." Zero stepped over the fallen John as Vanzetti's eyes shot open. "Why would I kill you? You're not a Maverick." He smiled. "The government declared you Maverick, but the government was wrong, and the proof's right here."

"But… I…" Vanzetti's mouth was like a fish's, glub glub glub. "I ran away, I evaded the Hunters, I…"

"Acted in accordance with the First Law," Zero interrupted. "Those things you listed are all Second Law violations, and the First Law trumps it. You were doing what you thought would save human life, so you were in the right." He nodded, smiling slightly. "Maverick isn't something someone else calls you. It's something you are, or are not. You aren't." He stepped past Vanzetti into the doorway. His voice elevated as he spoke. "And anyone who says otherwise will answer to me!"

He felt, rather than saw, Vanzetti turn around to watch his back. For his part, Zero's gaze fell on the cops standing, weapons drawn, around the entrance to the apartment. He looked them over, meeting eyes with several of them, before saying, "John Meyer is inside. He is to be arrested on three counts of homicide. I'm taking Vanzetti with me. He has assisted me in my investigation and I wish to debrief him further. Are there any questions?"

The police glanced at each other, sharing the same sort of 'is-this-happening' expression. Reploids just didn't give orders to humans. They didn't arrest humans or get involved in human crime. They certainly didn't decide who was and wasn't Maverick.

Zero would have corrected them, if he'd known the source of their confusion. He wasn't a reploid. "In that case, go," he said to the cops, and then over his shoulder to Vanzetti, "Follow me."

And the Red Demon's mission of mercy was complete.

* * *

"So, who's your son?"

"Hm?"

"Don't think I didn't notice you working on a new reploid, Dr. Cain. The government expressly forbade you from building any new ones after… the First War."

"Oh, that is true, X. Although it didn't stop them from quietly lifting some of my designs and having other people build them. They give me a stipend to conduct research, and if I just so happen to produce schematics for Hunter-type reploids… well, that's a happy coincidence, isn't it?"

"They'll never know their father."

"Many of my children never wanted to know their father."

"I know you're taking Sigma's defection hard, doctor, and I understand…"

"Sigma? Who was talking about Sigma? I didn't mention Sigma."

"…I guess you didn't."

"Now that you mention it, though, I _am_ working on a new design. I'm going to see if I can convince them to let me build this one myself. I've… missed that part of my life."

"They probably won't, even if you're still the best roboticist around."

"Don't crush my dreams, X."

"Sorry."

"Actually… my end-goal was for this new son of mine to help you out with one of your problems."

"Oh?"

"Tell me: have you been following Zero's latest Hunt?"

"A little."

"Does it disturb you that the government's only available reaction to suspected reploid crime is a Maverick label and summary execution?"

"More than a little. It means there's no difference between a jaywalker and a mass-murderer. It makes the slope between the two awfully slippery."

"What if we had dedicated investigators who would look into such things? They'd investigate Maverickism, to be sure, but they'd also be looking into incidents like we saw here, where we don't know if there's a Maverick or what's going on."

"You'll see no objections from me, doctor. Anything that gets us closer to justice."

"And, eventually, I hope for him to become leader of the Hunters. He'll be someone with combat experience, but also precision, judgment, and nuance. Someone with experience dealing with both humans and reploids, someone who can move between those worlds."

"Sounds awfully ambitious. What if he decides he'd rather go into stamp collecting?"

"Well, that's always a possibility, I suppose. Free will's a…"

"I know, I know."

* * *

Alia and Rekir looked down at John Meyer from the observation deck above the interrogation room. "Aren't you glad I brought you along?" Rekir said to Alia. "It's good to get out of Hunter Base sometimes."

"I know it's good," she said defensively, "I just never have time to do it."

Rekir grinned. "You know, I can probably keep you on special assignment for another day or two, if you want. I mean, between you and me, we're done with the case. I reckon there wouldn't be anything for you to do, really. But it would give you a little time to get your feet beneath you."

She looked surprised at him. "Really? I… I don't…" She looked to be thinking about it, then shook her head. "No. When I'm ready, I've got a good backlog of vacation time to take. Until then… well, if I'm not working, it's hard for me to know who I am."

"Ohhh… one of those, huh?"

"I guess."

The human in the white room kept reaching for his right arm. It wasn't there. The police had cleaned up the socket for his prosthetic arm, but had neglected to give him a new one.

"So Zero was right all along," Alia said. "What he remembered of Haley Paschal was that she had a prosthetic arm. That's why he was ready to accept the idea of a robot arm on a human body. It was a dumbot arm from one of Watkins' prototypes, fished out of the trash and re-engineered to fit John like his usual prosthetic. When he wanted to murder, he'd swap out his legitimate medical prosthetic for the murder weapon. And boom—he was a human with the strength of a reploid."

"Yeah. That's what Zero was really doing that day he visited Watkins—proving that someone could raid Watkins' trash undetected. Except John wasn't totally undetected, was he?"

"No. Vanzetti was cleaning up that day, and took the garbage out. There, he stumbled on John retrieving components for personal use. Vanzetti thought, at the time, that it was just going to be embezzlement or petty thievery, so he didn't do much, especially when John threatened to call him a Maverick."

Rekir shook his head. "It hurts to know that throwing the word 'Maverick' around is so potent."

"I know. It was compelling, wasn't it? After he committed his first murder, he made that anonymous call to pin it on Vanzetti. In the bargain, it silenced the only person who knew he was up to something. And we very nearly cleaned up behind him. We almost covered his tracks."

"It was a clever idea, in a twisted sort of way," Rekir said. "Mavericks can inflict a lot of damage, so the process to Hunt them cuts out all the fat. It goes straight from accusation to execution. It puts the burden of proof on the reploid to prove his innocence, and that was more than Vanzetti could handle. This guy would have killed until Vanzetti was caught and terminated, and then… just stopped. And no one would have ever looked closer."

They gazed down at him. He hadn't moved, other than to stroke his shoulder, in some time.

"Did we ever figure out why he did it?" Rekir asked.

"Just suggestions… professional jealousy, mating habits and conflicts, the arrogance to believe he could get away with it… strangeness, really. I've looked at the list, and I see explanations, but no real 'why'."

"And what makes it worse," Rekir added, "is that she considered him a friend. They were part of the same circle of friends. "The Eclectic Eight" or some nonsense like that. They played board games together and worked on similar projects. She'd programmed Red Bird to accept him as a friend, as a member of their group. Then he killed her. And her cat, who couldn't defend itself against a human. Rust, what was the _point_?"

John's eyes had a blank expression. Rekir caught himself trying to read emotions into that blank slate. Almost any narrative, he realized, would fit.

People were unknowable.

He shivered, drew back safely to the realm of the known. "And we think he would have killed as long as his cover held, right?" he said.

"We think so. That's why sending the 5th Squad into reploid community housing was so important. It encouraged John to think his window to kill was still open. So he struck again."

"And Zero was ready." Rekir's face revealed some of his pride in his boss. "He got the idea from fighting Sigma, actually."

"From… ewww," Alia said.

"The enemy's the best teacher," Rekir said. "That's what Zero told me, anyway. During the 2nd War, Sigma and one of his top lieutenants, Magna Centipede, made heavy use of holograms to try and get X out of position, waste his shots, and expose his back. Zero reasoned he could pull the same trick. So he had Douglas rig up a couple of holo-projectors, then sent them to the homes of the four scientists he thought might be the next targets—the other members of the Eclectic Eight. Soon as the scientists got home, he had us record the scientists moving a little and talking, so that he could use those recordings to build the holos."

"Then we hid the scientists and put Hunters inside to wait for our pal there," she said, gesturing down to the unmoving human. "And he went to Aaron's house, where Mr. Slate told him Vanzetti was going."

"Right."

"Rekir?"

"Yes?"

"How did Zero know Vanzetti was at Mr. Slate's?"

Rekir laughed mirthlessly. "Beats me."

They looked down at John.

"Why won't he move?" Alia said. "He is still alive, right?"

"I can see him breathing," Rekir replied. "He's alive."

"Then… what's he doing?"

"What is there for him to do?" Rekir asked. "He got caught red-handed. Zero's evidence was circumstantial on its own, but with what happened in Aaron's apartment, the trap springs shut. He's done. Whatever life he had is gone. It's prison for the rest of his natural life, now."

Alia's face creased. "Prison… for the rest of his life, huh?"

"That's what they're expecting."

"I… almost think I'd rather die, to be honest."

Rekir looked impressed at that. "Really?"

"I think so. I mean, think about what that means, symbolically. It means that society has judged you such an extreme cancer that you can't be associated with normal, everyday people. It has to keep you separate. Isn't that the same as death, pretty much?"

"A workaholic to the end, eh?" Rekir said with a shrewd grin.

"Maaaaaybe."

"You know, that's sort of an endorsement of the Maverick Hunter status quo, isn't it? Once you go Maverick, you can't be trusted to be anything other than a Maverick, so... off with their heads!"

Alia recoiled from that. "I'm not sure I like it when you put it that way," she said.

Rekir looked away. "I don't know. You know why some people disagree? They'd say it eliminates any possibility of redemption later on. You can always make a turn for the better, can't you? Even in prison."

"Redemption?" She frowned. "That sounds like the rhetoric that priest might have used. Ugh, don't tell me you believe in that stuff."

"I don't know what I believe," Rekir said. "I'm kind of winging it. And no, I've never seen a Maverick go legit after making his break. Not personally. But you know? I can't say it's impossible, either."

John's head drooped down, looking with unfocused eyes into his lap.

"You know what?" Rekir said.

"What?"

"I half-expected it was going to be Sigma."

Alia rolled her eyes. "That's not even funny. Come on, this is boring. Let's get out of here."

Rekir nodded. "Sure thing."

* * *

"X tells me it will be a few days before the government formally lets Vanzetti reenter society." Zero looked at Vito with a neutral expression. The man seemed happy enough to be coming home, but his face really perked up at Zero's news.

"Wonderful! I suppose they had to write the procedures as they went along. They've never un-designated a Maverick before, have they?"

"I've no records of it." Zero didn't mention that his knowledge of such things was potentially flawed. You never reveal a weakness to an enemy—he believed that.

"I'm just glad everything worked out." Vito opened the door. "Ha! Like I never left." He walked back in, scanned around a moment as if to ensure that nothing had moved in his absence, and then walked to his couch and plopped down. "Ooooh, that feels nice. The police station beds were like sleeping on a table." He looked up at Zero. "Though I suppose you wouldn't know from that, would you?"

Zero calmly shut the door behind him. Vito noticed. "Oh," the priest said, "I thought you were just going to drop me off. So…" he recovered his body enough to lean forward and look up. "What's on your mind?"

"You're a hypocrite," Zero said.

Vito smiled. "Your directness is refreshing," he said. "But can you be specific?"

Zero let some of his anger leak onto his face. "As long as we were on the Hunt, you told everyone who would listen that the confessional is sacred. You can't tell anyone what went on there, you said. It's privileged. I can't say."

"Yes," Vito acknowledged expectantly.

"But it was all a lie. You told me everything."

"Really?" Vito said with a cocked eyebrow.

Zero didn't know if he should be offended or not by the priest's expression, so he plunged on. "The first time we spoke, you asked me why I thought Vanzetti was a Maverick. You kept hammering on that point, you drew attention back to it more than once."

"And?" Vito asked. "That doesn't mean anything."

"Except it did," Zero said. "Everyone was sure Vanzetti was the Maverick. You kept reintroducing doubt, bringing it back up. You were the only person doing that! That was as good as saying you didn't think he was a Maverick."

Vito said nothing in reply, so Zero continued. "The second time, you practically told me that the anonymous tip about Vanzetti was wrong, but you didn't stop there. You said, If you can't figure out what's right or wrong, the only way to decide is to come to someone who you trust and talk about it. That's exactly what happened, isn't it? Vanzetti didn't come to you to go to confession. He came asking for advice. He knew he was being Hunted, and framed. He knew he couldn't stop the killer by legitimate means. So he wanted you to help him figure out what to do."

"Hm," Vito said.

"And then you told me that, sideways. Put it all together, and your words told me it was a human who was the murderer. Why? Because Vanzetti wouldn't be having any ethical issues if it was another reploid who was killing people. He'd have done everything he could to stop him, guilt-free. The First Law would have applied cleanly. The only thing that could complicate matters would be a human killer. Then the First Law becomes a pretzel. Do nothing and humans die, but doing something means harming a human."

"That does sound complicated," Vito allowed. "Though I see it didn't stop you."

"I'm strong enough to stop a human without harming him," Zero said. "Vanzetti couldn't count on doing the same."

Vito sighed. "It's sad that true justice is the luxury of the strong."

"You leaked that information to me to put me on the right track to find the real killer," Zero continued. "I found the evidence I needed to support that, and then came back to you. And when I wasn't sure what to make of your words, you said, "Just like last time, I can't tell you anything." Except that you _had_. Sort of. Which meant that you had the second time, too, if I could parse it right."

"This is downright dizzying," the priest said.

Zero huffed and plowed on. "The third time, you told me what choice Vito had made. "I'll defy the law to stand on principles, and I'm not the only one", you said. The other one was Vanzetti. He was going to stop the murders, even if that meant doing the forbidden. Even if it meant going Maverick himself—really going Maverick—in a way he never wished to do. "Thou shalt not kill", that's how it goes, right?"

"Yes. But also pertinent here is "love thy neighbor". I told you it was more complicated than it seemed."

"And just in case I'd missed that one, you also said that when someone's in a great trial, they trust in god and do their best, no matter what anyone else says. Vanzetti was going to act according to his conscience, not the Laws."

"I like to think the statement has face value, also," Vito said.

"What I still didn't understand was, if Vanzetti was willing to go that far, why hadn't he already? Then I realized that he wasn't sure who the next victim would be. He'd only have one shot to intervene and make it stick. If he missed, he wouldn't have a second chance. He'd be caught and killed, and the killer would be free to go. So Vanzetti had to hide somewhere while trying to get information on who would be next. That's when you let slip that you'd been trying to talk to your lawyer. Mr. Slate."

"He is a friend of mine," was as far as Vito would go.

"A guy the cops wouldn't go near if they could avoid it. A guy you knew was a reploid sympathizer. Delphi was in more than a couple of the wedding photos I saw at his house—a wedding you presided over. You'd said yourself that Mr. Slate was a friend of yours, and I knew from when you were questioned the first time that you'd talked reploid law with Mr. Slate. It all made sense. When Vanzetti came to you, you sent him to Mr. Slate's for sanctuary.

"But your arrest changed the timetable. "My part is ended. Maybe now people will realize it." That was your way of saying time was up. Vanzetti was going to act. Part of it was fear that you'd be punished for Vanzetti's actions, part of it was fear that you'd reveal him."

"I suspect it was more the former than the latter," Vito said. "That might just be my ego speaking, though. I don't really know what he thought of me, but I'd like to think it was kindly."

"So you directed me to Mr. Slate to try and follow in Vanzetti's footsteps. Either I would find the killer, or meet a Vanzetti who was just trying to do the right thing. You trusted at that point that I wouldn't kill Vanzetti for no good reason. You trusted that I would save him and the humans alike."

Vito smiled. "You can be a beautiful person, at times," he said.

Zero slowly shook his head. "You revealed all of that to me with your double-talk and questions. You didn't keep the confessional sacred and secret, you gave me everything."

"Not everything," Vito said, acknowledging the accusation for the first time. "But a lot."

"Hypocrite," Zero said. "You broke the law in a way that would let you to say you hadn't, while making yourself feel oh-so-clever the whole time. How do you defend yourself?"

"'God created the Sabbath for man, not man for the Sabbath'."

Zero's nose crinkled. "You're disgusting."

"I don't think you appreciate the fix I was in." For the first time, Vito's façade cracked. His brow wrinkled, his eyes slightly watered, and his hands clasped so tightly his knuckles turned white. His body shook slightly as he began to speak again. "You see, I was the second rabbit in that joke I told you. I was tightly bound, and kept making choices trying to serve the highest priorities… and I could never be sure that I was gnawing off the correct leg."

He spread his hands, palms up. "The scales of justice only have two baskets, but I was juggling far more than that. I had to try and do what's right by the laws of the Church. I had to find a way to try and uphold freedom of religion for reploids—because if I'd broken my silence, if I'd given up that confessional, I would have told the state that reploids don't deserve the same protections that religious humans do. I would have confirmed the injustice they're trying to pull off now.

"I had to do what I thought was right by Vanzetti as a legal person, and also what was right by his soul… and those are not necessarily the same. I had to obey the law as much as possible, as I'm a citizen, and try to defend the innocent potential victims of a murderer." He forced himself to swallow, and met Zero's eyes. "I had to choose which laws to break. It wasn't easy, mind you."

"So you made your choices trying to balance all of that, huh?" Zero huffed. "You know, your choice made it possible for the murderer to get his second and third kills."

"I know." The priest closed his eyes. "I knew that was going to be a possibility, doing it that way. What, do you think I'm okay with that? Do you think I wanted the murderer to act like that? That's why the joke fit so well. I felt like there must be some… some right answer. Some better way to do this, and for all of my sinful pride in my mind, I couldn't find it. I was trapped. And even if the choice I made was the best—which I doubted—there were still so many risks and challenges." He gave a fluttering smile. "But God does answer prayer. This time, He sent me you."

"Don't go including me in this god business," Zero said angrily.

"Surely you're not too great for the glory of God," Vito said.

"I don't like the idea that someone else was behind my actions," Zero shot back. "I tell me what to do. Not some god with invisible strings. Not anyone—not unless I give that permission, which I haven't."

"And that's exactly the property I needed," Vito said. "That property that God gave you was the key to this whole scenario. If you'd hunted Vanzetti down and killed him, the whole world would have congratulated you on a job well done. And when the truth came out later, if it ever did, no one would blame you. You were just following orders. But that's not who you are. When people told you that Vanzetti was a Maverick… you found it within yourself to tell them they were wrong. Do you know how rare that is, Zero? How precious? Everyone has the _capacity_ to define his own destiny, but few have the audacity to pull the trick off. You do. You were a gift, Zero. I thank you for being that person."

Zero crossed his arms, his face tilted down, elegant features distorted by distaste. "I've never hated a compliment so much," he said. "Even now you're trying to change me. You're trying to say that not killing was ideal here."

"Wasn't it?" Vito asked.

"That's not what I mean," Zero said. "I mean… on this whole case, you've been telling me in your own way that killing Mavericks is wrong."

"It is," Vito said. "It's ghastly. There's no due process, no vetting, not even an attempt to secure justice. There's no possibility of forgiveness or redemption, and no recourse if the state was wrong. If this incident doesn't prove to you that the system is broken, I don't know what will."

"No," said Zero with a shake of his head. "I am the one who kills Mavericks. You can't make me believe that I'm wrong about this."

Vito gave a wry smile. "Well, you can't blame me for trying, can you?"

"Without the law, what are we?" Zero said. "We're lost. Adrift. There's nothing. I need more than that."

"And that's fine, to an extent," Vito said. "But the law has limits, as you just demonstrated yourself. You rose above the law to reach for justice, and it was magnificent."

Zero didn't say anything to that, so Vito spoke again. "There's a parable about a woman who commits a crime and is dragged into the street to face justice. There are three different endings to this story. In one, the woman lives because the rabbi and his city are corrupt. In another, the rabbi himself kills the woman because he, and his city, are inflexible. 'Most societies oscillate like this between decay and rigor mortis, and when they veer too far they die. Only one rabbi demanded of us such perfect balance that we could uphold the law and still forgive the deviation. And so, of course…'" he gestured to the cross on his wall. "'We killed him'."

"I'm not part of your 'we', human."

"The sins of the fathers pass on to their sons. But that, in turn, allows grace to do the same."

"I'm done here," Zero said. "I don't need what you're selling."

"In my years in this business, I have found that people usually don't know what they need." Vito shook his head slightly. "Cling to X, Zero. You need him more than ever these days."

"I think this is what I hate about you so much," Zero retorted. "You seem so sure about what other people need. Didn't you say earlier that people are unknowable? You can't be sure, but you act that way. It's gross."

"But I'm right, aren't I? You _do_ need X."

That stalled Zero for a moment. Then he shook his head. "I never want to talk to you again," he said.

"That's fine. Don't forget me, that's all I ask."

"Ha! The joke's on you," Zero shot back. "My memory is broken. I can't say I'll remember you. You'll most likely slip through the cracks of my mind, and you will not be missed."

"I'm okay with not being remembered in your mind. Remember me in your soul."

"_I don't have a soul!"_

Vito smiled mildly. "That's not up to you," he said.

Zero whirled on the spot, the tips of his feet digging into the floor of Vito's domicile. He reached for the door, yanked it nearly off its hinges—and stopped. He didn't need to do this, he almost hated himself for doing it, but… X would have insisted.

Forcing himself every moment, acting against what his nature desired, Zero looked over his shoulder. With an effort of will greater than it took to kill a Maverick, Zero squeezed out a few words. "Thank you… for helping me save Vanzetti."

The priest's eyes closed in satisfaction. "Any time," he replied.

Zero slammed the door anyway, so hard it rattled the frame.

But he did it without any real conviction.

* * *

"And that should just about do it," Alia said. She slid the papers over to Vanzetti, who gripped them with trembling hands. "You are, officially, perfectly decent."

"Really?" Vanzetti said, swallowing. "I… I still have a job? And friends?"

"Yes, Watkins has been convinced to keep you employed," Alia said. "We told them you did everything you could to save their scientists, so they decided you were acting in their interests. They'll expect you at work tomorrow, in fact. As for your friends…" she shrugged. "I can't tell you that. But I'll say if I was falsely accused of something and my friends took it personally, I'd rather find some new friends."

The corners of his lips curled. "It's easier for some of us than others."

He saw her pause in her motions, before continuing. "Zero would probably agree," she said, before regaining a more professional demeanor. "All records of the accusation have been expunged. It's like this whole ordeal never happened. Legally, at least," she said, perhaps after deciding the words might have been in bad taste. That didn't seem to be enough for her, because she leaned in and added, "For what it's worth, I think you did the right thing."

"Thank you." Vanzetti didn't know what it was worth. Probably nothing. But it made him feel a little better.

"Now," she said, rising, "we've arranged to get you safely home. What happens after that is up to you."

Hunter Base was, to Vanzetti, vaguely familiar, in the way that all hospitals have a tenuous similarity. Maybe it was the size of the rooms, which were spaced out much too far for them to be offices. Or maybe it was the industrial-grade sprinkler system overhead. "What is this place?" he asked.

"Hunter Base. Oh… I think I know what you mean. It used to be Cain Labs."

"Cain Labs," Vanzetti said. "That's pretty amazing. Hey, is Dr. Cain here?"

"Yes," Alia said with an indulgent smile. "And X, too."

"X," Vanzetti murmured reverently. "This is a special place, then. This should be a museum or a monument, not a… a…" He couldn't find the words for it, and trailed off. Alia didn't help him out, and so silence settled between them as they took an elevator down.

The silence was broken the moment the elevator doors opened.

"Tweet tweet! Tweet tweet!"

"Yes, I see them too, Red Bird."

"Red Bird?" Alia said with disapproval. She looked to a Hunter in green armor. "That's the best you could do, Rekir? Red Bird?"

The small creature had been perched on Rekir's shoulder. During the conversation it launched itself off and circled crazily around Vanzetti's head. He stumbled backwards a step; it was hard to know what it was doing, and he didn't want to hurt it on accident.

"Come back, Red Bird," Rekir commanded, and at once the robot returned to his shoulder, merrily saying "tweet" as it flew. "That's a good bird. Alia, what all did you do to him?"

She smiled. "Uprated optics, more memory, and a longer battery life. If you ever have the daring to take that target into battle, there's also a mod I can install that would let it drop radio beacons for tracking and spotting."

"Target?" said Rekir, alarmed. He drew his shoulder back and half-covered Red Bird with a hand, while it sent angry "tweets" in Alia's direction.

"Of course, target," she said. "It's _bright red_."

"So is Zero!" Rekir said defensively.

"Seriously?" Alia deadpanned.

"Red Bird's small and fast and obviously unarmed," Rekir protested. "No one would shoot at him, right?"

"Are you kidding? Can you think of a better target for someone who's trying to show off?"

"Tweet!" screamed Red Bird.

"Hey, now, now," Rekir said soothingly. "Don't let the mean Operator scare you, no one would shoot at little Red Bird, don't worry." He ran a finger along its side, causing it to preen into his touch.

Alia rolled her eyes. "You're making me sick," she said. "Come on, Vanzetti."

The bewildered reploid followed. Maybe, he thought, Hunters are just… normal people, like him. They had such a reputation—and they had X, and Zero, too!—and… well, no one knew what to make of the Hunters. Maybe they were just normal people, after all.

Alia led him to a wide-bodied transport. Another Hunter with a prominent red visor covering his face was waiting there. "Mace will take you home," she said.

Okay, maybe the Hunters were a little scary and weird after all. The ride was silent, and Vanzetti could see nothing of the Hunter's face, so conversation couldn't start. Instead he retreated into his head.

Would things really be the same? Could people look at him without seeing the Maverick whose face had been plastered on every screen and monitor? It was an unpleasant thought. Maybe the people who knew him best would be able to look past that, but meeting new people was going to be dangerous. Even the people who'd known him had probably spent a couple of days thinking how and why he'd gone Maverick. Even though he hadn't, that's not how people's minds work. They couldn't just forget.

He'd come out of this alive, he knew, but not unscathed. He would just have to be thankful for small blessings.

It occurred to him as they neared reploid community housing that he was maybe associated with the Hunters now, too. He'd been in Hunter custody for days, and the Hunters were taking him home. Some people might see him as a sort of hero, for defying the Maverick label. Others would despise him for collaborating, even if it was at the expense of a human. Some would hate him for being labeled a Maverick and coming back, others would love him for the same reason. There were some borderline cases, there, that would praise him for going Maverick and getting away with it. There were even those who would be angry at him for not actually going Maverick when he had the chance.

It made his head hurt. But there was nowhere else to go. This was his home. It was time.

He ran through a brief "Glory Be" in his head, then reached for the transport's door. He started to get out.

He jerked to a stop before he got away. He found himself snagged by the Hunter in the driver's seat. Alarmed, he whipped his head around. Panicked thoughts surged through him—was the Hunter going to kill him anyway?

Slowly, the Hunter pushed his red visor up. Vanzetti thought he saw why the Hunter wore it—his facial features were flat and oblong, fading out of and into the skin. His eyes were solid off-white orbs. If he wasn't so terrifying, his visage would have made Vanzetti feel better about his own construction.

The Hunter nodded once, slowly, locked eyes with Vanzetti, and then said, "Salaam."

The hand released him. Vanzetti stumbled out of the transport; the door shut behind him, and the transport smoothly drifted away.

Despite himself, Vanzetti smiled, and headed home.

* * *

_Fin_


	9. Epilogue

_This story was a lot of fun to write._

_Ironically, this story was inspired by a scene I didn't even end up using! I had a scene in my head of Zero actually going to confession himself, just to try it, grumping all along. It ended up not fitting, and I excised it, but I got a neat story out of the idea._

_Religion plays such a large role in today's society it is hard to imagine it not existing in the future. You don't see it a whole lot—don't even really see it mentioned, except in swear words that linger on like vestigial organs. So I wanted to explore the idea a bit, especially as it relates to reploids. Reploids wouldn't need religion for one of its functions (they have an answer to "where did I come from?" and the second-order question, "so where did humans come from?" would have less urgency); yet at the same time, religion has long been the salve and boon of the oppressed. Given a reading on the X-series world of reploids as a discriminated-against minority, religion would seem to be able to gain some purchase in their numbers._

_When I created Rekir and Mace (and Boj, for that matter) in "False Dawn", I never intended for them to be, you know, a thing. They were there merely because Zero wasn't going to be alone during the events of the story. As some of my reviewers noted, I didn't even really bother to describe them. That oversight happened because, in my head, they were expendable. But that's what they say about best-laid plans. I think that X and Zero interact with each other a lot, but each one is a Squad Leader, with all the responsibilities that that entails. Aside from major, Maverick War-level incidents, they probably don't work together day-to-day. Since this was a smaller incident, and it was really about Zero and not the Zero-X dynamic, it wouldn't have made sense for X to play a big part. (I take unreasonable amusement from the fact that I wrote an X story of this length without X actually getting any "screen time".) That meant Zero needed a supporting cast, which meant digging Mace and (especially) Rekir back out._

_They are minor, non-canonical characters though, so that means at some point that they must die to keep them out of the way during later games—X5, in particular. Sort of like I had to kill off Haley Paschal. (Poor Haley Paschal.) In my head-canon I know how and when, and there's a remote possibility of a story at some point saying why and when. But that feels like all kinds of self-indulgence, so probably not._

_Mace's design is based off of a character of the same name from the late '80s cartoon "Cops". That Mace was probably not a Muslim, but as short as that series lasted, who knows? The name 'Rekir' is an extremely thinly disguised Star Trek reference. That and his post as Zero's "number one" were as far as that reference was supposed to go, but when this story started rolling I got really excited about sticking in the scene with him playing the trombone. Not everything needs a reason, darn it._

_Vito's extended quotation in chapter eight is from one of Orson Scott Card's Ender sequels; I can't remember which. Card's recent output has been disappointing, by his standards, but the first Ender cycle (Ender's Game, Speaker For the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind) I would recommend without reservation._

_The name "Vanzetti" is from a famous court case from the 1930s. Sacco and Vanzetti were two Italian immigrants to America who had the misfortune to arrive during the "Red Scare", one of America's periodic anti-immigration paroxysms. The two were accused of robbing a bank, killing a person along the way. The trial was a bit of a farce, the outcome a foregone conclusion. The names became a rallying cry for opposition to the Red Scare. Oddly, modern ballistics testing shows that Sacco's gun was the murder weapon. Vanzetti, at least, might still have been innocent. Either way, the association of a false Maverick with this famously corrupt court case was the goal._

_Some of you who know movies might be saying, "Of course, it was the one-armed man!" regarding the ending. Although it bears a strong resemblance to certain elements of "The Fugitive", I contend that my true inspiration was a throwaway cartoon, almost a margin note, in the "Ghost in the Shell" manga. It explained, graphically, the whole "cybernetic-body-or-don't-bother" concept, at least as it relates to trying to punch above your weight. Ever since I saw it I had a low-level desire to make that a relevant point somewhere. And now I did, so, yay me._

_My favorite scene to write was probably the one with Delphi and Mr. Slate (the latter being a subtle Discworld reference). If you observe any social or political movement, you will see something remarkable happen when the movement achieves success. Success tends to fracture the coalition that tried to compel the change. Some elements go conservative, to try and merely retain the gains that have been made. What remains is usually the more radical elements of the group, and they tend to drive the agenda to its logical extreme—because that's the only way to stay relevant. The same applies to people, too._

_There's a different sort of convergence at work, too. Delphi is rather foul-mouthed, but aside from the Maverick-esque slurs he throws at Mr. Slate, he mostly swears like a human instead of using the usual reploid profanity ("rust", "verdigris", "scrap"). Long and close association between Delphi and Mr. Slate has drawn them to be more like each other in some ways. Human (and, by extension, reploid) instinct: be part of your pack._

_This story is set between X2 and X3, which seems to me to be the most fertile period for writing outside-the-canon stories. X1 and X2 are on a strict timetable and, well, there's no Zero between; after X3, X's premonition of killing Zero would act as a damper of sorts. Plus there's no stated timeframe between X2 and X3 that I'm aware of, so there's plenty of time to play in._

_Signas' background is that he was an "investigator" before joining/becoming the leader of the Maverick Hunters. Since no one ever bothered to say what it was he was investigating (in a virus-'verse, the virus would be the logical thing, even though that would seem to guarantee his infection, but as noted before I write out the virus), this seemed like as good a place as any for me to propose a solution._

_Thanks to everyone for your continued patronage. I'm publishing a little fluff piece right now ("One Link in the Cable"), about Zero being bored and an initiative to train rookie Hunters. The next major story I'm working on will not be ready for several weeks, but when it is published it will quickly change rating to 'M', as it is an exceptionally dark alternate universe—a universe so dark that Mavericks are the good guys._

_Thanks again!_


End file.
